


In the Right Company

by auberus, Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Category: Highlander, X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M, Sexual Content, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:18:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10866969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auberus/pseuds/auberus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: Methos breaks Victor and Logan out of prison because they represent a risk if they fall into the wrong hands. A run in with Kronos later, and they're set on a path that could bring the world to its knees.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has not been beta-read, nor revised since I originally wrote it with Auberus back in 2009/2010.

Victor rolled his head on his shoulders without opening his eyes, working out kinks from being sprawled in the cell after he'd been dumped back in there, unconscious instead of dead like the humans had expected him to be. Not the worst way to wake up, but not the best, either. He waited a moment longer before kicking his brother in the leg.

"I'm awake already, Victor." Logan opened his eyes, leaning against the wall opposite Victor. A faint smirk was on his lips, despite the situation they were in. It wasn't too far different from those they'd been in before, if a little more of a bitch to get out of without help.

"We've got a visitor from the JAG office." He jerked his head slightly toward the door of their cell, before Victor could make a smart-aleck remark, drawing the other man's attention to the uniformed man on the other side of the bars.

Methos lifted an eyebrow at the recumbent pair. They weren't his sort of Immortal, but they came closer than any of the oddities the human race threw out from time to time. In fact, there was something about their arrogance that reminded him inexorably of the brother he'd fled to Vietnam to avoid; of the pair of them, confined but still arrogant in any of the hundred dungeons they'd temporarily inhabited over the centuries. Hopefully these two didn't have a Silas and a Caspian of their own waiting in the wings to free them. If it had been himself and Kronos thus confined, the entire camp would already have been doomed.

Sliding his hands into the pockets of his stolen uniform, Methos propped a shoulder against the doorframe and gave the prisoners the sort of once-over that was guaranteed to raise the hackles of anyone with any sort of self-respect. He'd had a long time to practice that particular expression, and had raised it to a near-art form.

"Captain Michael Pierce," he offered, once he'd finished his perusal of the pair.

Victor watched the man lazily as he looked them over, the lift of his upper lip to show off sharp fangs the only sign of his discomfort with the perusal. The silent snarl of one predator making it clear to another he wasn't afraid.

"Victor, and he's Jimmy." He continued to watch the man with a nearly unblinking gaze that made most humans squirm, amused to find this man wasn't. Almost reminded him of one of the officers from another war, whose name he hadn't bothered to remember.

Logan hadn't moved, either, though he frowned at the once-over from Pierce, irritation building at the subtle arrogance in the human's attitude. "Come to look at the freak show?" he added onto his brother's offer of their names, an edge to his voice of dark amusement.

"Do I look like a sightseer?" Methos asked sharply, allowing some of the irritation he's feeling to surface in his voice. The combination of seeing Kronos again after nearly a thousand years, and of coming from that into a war as nasty as any he'd fought in before wars had rules, had brought Death uncomfortably close to the surface, and this confrontation was threatening the fine edges of his control in a way that he hadn't had to face in centuries. It was more than enough to shorten his temper. "I was considering ways to liberate the pair of you, but I'm not convinced that it wouldn't do more harm than good. The pair of you are in desperate need of a minder, and I don't think it's a task I'm interested in undertaking. Has no one ever pointed out to you the inadvisability of revealing your abilities to mortals?"

His tone was too sharp, he realized; too close to real threat, but with his temper simmering just below a boil, it was the best he could manage.

"Got a bit carried away." Victor shrugged, settling back against the wall a little more comfortably. No remorse or regret for what had happened, though he felt a twinge for getting his brother caught up in it. Only a little twinge, though.

Logan's frown deepened, curious now. "Are you suggesting you're not mortal?" It was in the way Pierce phrased the question, and something in the scent of him, familiar, though he wouldn't be able to put a name to it if he were asked. Except, maybe, old.

"Carried away," Methos said flatly. "That's certainly one way of putting things." Victor was very like Kronos, and Methos had to push back the twinge of what could only be called homesickness at the thought that he could have had his brother at his side at that very moment. Jimmy, though -- Jimmy reminded him of himself, which was more disturbing than anything else.

He tilted his head to the side, letting his lips curve into a smile that came nowhere near his eyes. It wasn't a pleasant expression; was, in fact, the sort of smile that tended to remind anyone who saw it of the tenuous nature of their grip on existence. The two men in front of him were predators; there was no doubting that, but then, he'd been one himself for millennia, and it was one of the more permanent facets of a mutable personality. Lifting an eyebrow at Jimmy, he straightened and took a few steps inside, almost into reach but not quite.

"What do you think?" he asked, genuinely curious beneath the indifference he wore like a mask. "Aren't the pair of you mortal? You do age, I assume, even if you don't die as easily as the rest of them."

Logan grinned as Victor chuckled, the pair of them giving Pierce looks that would have looked at home gracing the faces of wolves, if wolves took human form. Neither of them had noticed any real changes in a century now, not since they had finished growing up. Nothing that would be called aging, at least.

"If by aging you mean the years pass and we keep living, maybe." Logan shrugged, a smirk still lingering on his face. "Don't know what you are, though, but you're not like the rest here." He paused, exchanging a look with Victor before adding, "You don't smell right."

"Should I say thank you, or take offense?" Methos asked, with an answering smirk of his own. "How old are the two of you, anyway?" He'd first noticed these odd little...quirks in humanity almost two thousand years ago, though he doubted very much that the pair in front of him were anywhere close to that old. "A century? A century and a half?"

He'd met enough young Immortals to recognize the arrogance and sense of invincibility that came with the realization that the rest of humanity was aging and dying and leaving them untouched. "Neither of you has enough sense to realize that what you consider a strength can be worse than weakness once you've fallen into the wrong hands. And you have most _certainly_ managed to do that."

Memory threatened to surface, but he forced it down, the chill in his eyes and voice deepening with the effort. "Not that you seem to have realized it, as of yet." The smile that twisted his lips was one that Kronos would have recognized -- and rejoiced in. "I'm sure you'll more fully comprehend the error of your ways once they've strapped you to a lab table and vivisected you three or four hundred times. I'd leave you to it, if it weren't for the fact that mortals have a distressing tendency to start witch hunts over things like you." Smile fading, he regarded the pair of them with flat disinterest. "Frankly, even with that taken into consideration, I doubt either of you is worth my time."

They exchanged another glance, Logan cocking a questioning eyebrow, and Victor narrowing his eyes, wary and familiar suspicion settling over his features. Uncertain of what would happen, but not about to let someone threaten him or Jimmy. It wasn't entirely impossible for them to break out on their own, but it could be far more trouble than it was worth to do so.

And the fact Pierce had guessed their age so closely only added to the wariness, making him want to bare his teeth at him and snarl. To fight his way out, and damn the consequences, like they had before, when they were younger and more vulnerable.

"What's your own safety worth?" Logan's voice held a hint of the same snarl that Victor was barely holding back. "You, Colonel Audley, whoever else is like you."

Not that he'd necessarily tell, not of his own volition. But he wouldn't promise Victor was above using that to get them out of trouble, or that he wouldn't reveal the information if he were subjected to the sort of torture Pierce was suggesting would happen.

Methos didn't even try to keep Death from his face, and when he spoke it was in the voice that countless thousands had heard just before his sword blotted the light from their eyes.

"Threaten me again and you'll damn well find out," he promised, hand slipping inside his coat to touch the hilt of his sword. He'd been on one of those lab tables himself, once, and if it came down to it, he would burn the world to ash rather than let it happen again. "Don't try to play games with me, boy. Neither of you is anywhere _close_ to my league."

Oddly enough, the promise of death in Pierce's eyes made Victor relax enough to grin again, teeth showing a moment, the situation back onto terms he was familiar with, at least to some extent.

"Are you going to try to kill us, or are you going to do something about these?" He held up one shackled hand, giving Pierce a look that said clearer than words he wasn't afraid - not that he'd admit it if he was.

Logan just kept silent this time, watching Pierce's move toward something in his coat - some sort of weapon, he assumed, though what, he wasn't sure. Not a gun, the movement wasn't quite right. A sword, possibly, though why the man was carrying around one of those when he wasn't in dress uniform was a curiosity.

"That depends," Methos said, and if he was using the voice he'd always reserved for Caspian and Silas, he barely noticed. Death was always too close for comfort, but here the effort of keeping him back was too much -- and unnecessary. "If you two morons are going to head right back out there and continue your quest to attract unwanted attention, I'll slice you into pieces and bury them all at least a mile apart -- or burn your bodies to ash. If you can be persuaded to behave sensibly..." This time, his smile held genuine amusement, but was, if anything, far more disturbing than the ones that failed to touch his eyes. "We might be able to come to some kind of an arrangement."

"What do you call sensible?" Logan could see the point in avoiding attracting too much attention - and he had tried to stop Victor, before things got out of hand. But there was a limit to how much of their violent nature either of them could deny before things got bad.

"We leave. Immediately. And the two of you stay where I can keep an eye on you, at least until I'm sure that I can trust you to behave with as much sense as a mortal of your apparent ages." Methos kept his voice flat, leaving no room for argument. "I'll not end up back in a laboratory because a pair of mutant humans can't keep their urges under control." It was the tone he used with Kronos, when Kronos was being unreasonable. _No, brother. The four of us can't take on a walled city._   Living had always been Methos' top priority, and he wasn't going to risk that for anyone, let alone for a pair of should-be-mortals.

Victor held up his still shackled hands in silent invitation for Pierce to take them off. He didn't have a problem with the plan as it stood, though if he didn't have the opportunity to kill something, he'd get really pissed off. And probably kill something anyway, just in a more attention-grabbing fashion.

"Deal." Logan was a little more patient in waiting for Pierce to deal with the shackles, though he itched to get out of there as much as Victor. Reaching out to clasp Victor's hand, the two pulling each other up once the shackles were gone, and waiting for direction from Pierce. It would take him, after all, to get them out of there without attracting the sort of attention their way would.

Methos took one last look at the still-shackled pair before slipping a lock-pick out of his sleeve and freeing them from their irons. He couldn't help feeling that by removing their shackles he was somehow chaining himself -- but it was too late for that. Besides, seeing Kronos had been a vivid reminder of the sheer delight that had gone with being Death, with using the sort of power that he usually pretended not to have. He couldn't help wondering if Kronos were still in California, or if his brother had tried to follow him. If the latter were the case, Kronos was probably lost somewhere in Eastern Europe. Hopefully, anyway -- though Methos couldn't help but wonder what his brother would make of these two.

"This way," he told them, and slid like water around the building the Army had been using as a jail. He'd dispatched the sentries to the back of said building on his way in, just in case he'd ended up needing an escape route. As they picked their way down the hill, they passed the two corpses he'd made on his way up, both of them lying face-up in the dirt, slit throats grinning up at the sky. "Tell me that you know _something_ about surviving in the wilderness," he murmured. "We can't chance the city for at least a week, and I don't much fancy playing nursemaid in the jungle to a pair of spoiled modern infants."

Victor laughed, low and amused, letting his claws elongate as he grinned. "You hunt, you kill, you survive." He still remembered their early years, when he'd had to hunt for both of them, to keep them alive. The forested slopes they'd grown up on might not be quite the same, but the principles certainly were.

"We'll live." Logan's smile was more restrained than Victor's, but he moved with the same quiet grace as his brother, two predators who were as much animal as they were human. "We wouldn't have if we couldn't survive the wilderness." Which was all the more clue he was giving Pierce to their past for now, still not entirely trusting. Not yet.

Methos hadn't the same preternatural abilities, but then, neither Victor or Jimmy had spent the better part of seven millennia in a world that was mostly wilderness. He moved at least as quietly as either of the younger men, and was more familiar with this sort of terrain than they were. "Good to know," he murmured, stepping over the body of the last sentry. Their woodscraft dated them, too -- meant that his guess about a century of life had been accurate enough. Any younger, and they'd likely be as clueless as most young Immortals.

"If you think you're up for it, then, we'll go north." His glance over his shoulder was as much challenge as question, though he tried to tell himself that neither of these men were Kronos, to be playing that sort of game with. The brother who'd had his back for a thousand years was more than the equal of the two almost-humans behind him, and not for the first time, he wished he'd had the nerve to stick around and let Kronos know that he was still around, still alive.

"How quickly do you heal?" he asked, once they'd gotten far enough into the jungle to be out of earshot of any stray sentries or wandering soldiers. The shout of pursuit had yet to go up behind them, but he still had one ear stretched for it. He had to know what the pair was physically capable of, at least. "Do you die and come back, or just not die at all?" Hopefully it was the former. It would make them easier to control, put the dynamics of the group close to those he'd used to hold the Horsemen together for ten centuries. If it were the latter, they were more than likely to be unnerved -- and unprepared -- for his sort of revival, should worst come to worst.

Victor grinned at the man's challenging look, his stance loose and easy, ready for the sort of challenge the man was suggesting. One where he could kill, whether human or animal, and ignore the complexities of life that was dealing with human society from the inside.

"We generally don't die." Logan answered the question, his expression more a smirk than Victor's, but equally as feral. "Unless someone's really lucky. But it doesn't stick, even then."

He actually wasn't certain if they really _died_ , or if it just seemed that way, but he had developed a dislike for explosives after the incident where they'd found out that little bit of information. They were one of the less pleasant things to have to heal from.

Which meant they would be a bit more difficult to handle than his brothers had been, at least on a physical level. Somehow, he didn't think either of them would give him as much trouble as Caspian had, once upon a time.

"I'd ask if you could follow orders, but I think you've already answered that for me," he said dryly, ducking under a low-hanging branch. "Give me too much trouble, though, and I'll find somewhere unpleasant to strand you." A thin smile. "I've had a lot of practice." _Kronos could tell you that. How many centuries did he spend in that well, anyway?_ His brother was going to be more than a little annoyed with him when they finally did re-encounter one another. Two months ago, the thought would have chilled him to the bone; had, in fact, sent him running half way around the world. Now, it was almost amusing. Explosives weren't the only reason he'd avoided war zones for the past two centuries.

"Fair deal." Victor spoke before Logan could this time, following closely behind Pierce. He had already decided to trust the man, something about him appealing to his inner beast. "You have an idea where we're going?" Other than north, and away from the humans who had locked the brothers in a cell.

Logan brought up the rear of the little group, keeping alert for any signs of those who would be following them, sooner or later. Or at least, trying to follow them, if they could keep up with them in this jungle.

"Some," Methos admitted. "I don't much fancy the idea of trying to take the pair of you through a Western-controlled border at the moment, even if you did have your papers." He paused, looking hard at the ground for a moment before moving off to the left. "I left some supplies out here, in case I ended up bringing the pair of you out," he explained. "Extra clothes, food, some books; that sort of thing. I've spent more than enough time wandering through the wilderness on the essentials to want to have to do it again."

The conveniences of the modern era were the best thing about it, and Methos had every intention of getting back to them sooner rather than later. "From here, we can pretty much choose a destination, at least in Asia, without having to go anywhere near the American authorities. They're a well-meaning enough government, but they've made things bloody hindering awkward lately."

Chuckling, Victor gave a shrug. He didn't particularly care about the government so long as they provided him a way to indulge in his need for violence and didn't get in the way. Though he would agree, at the moment, the American authorities would make things very awkward if they had to deal with them.

Logan smirked more at the implication that Pierce had been thinking ahead about breaking them out, even if he had given the impression he hadn't exactly intended to. Probably to make a point, Logan thought, but he kept his observation to himself for now. When he had a chance to talk to Victor without Pierce listening, then he'd mention it.

"What sort of books?" Logan asked instead, as they followed Pierce closely, glancing briefly at the spot of ground Pierce had, though he wasn't sure what the man had been looking at. Something he hadn't learned to spot yet, or wasn't aware of to look for, probably.

That was an unexpected question, and Methos, who was rarely wrong in his initial assessment of anyone, looked curiously at Jimmy before answering. There were depths there, then. The entire escapade was getting more interesting by the minute. 

"My journals -- well, some of them. Herodotus, and some of the other classics. A complete copy of Byron, a couple of mystery novels..." He shrugged. "They don't weigh more than they're worth."

Logan shrugged, though he was curious about the journals. The classics and Byron he'd left behind when he'd fled his childhood home with Victor, and didn't have any desire to revisit. "Might be interested in the journals," he conceded after a moment, ignoring the raised eyebrow from his brother.

"I doubt you'd be able to read them," Methos said, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards in amusement. "They're not in English." He'd stopped using modern languages almost five hundred years ago. "This way." He led them into a little gully, half-hidden by overgrown vegetation. The packs he'd tucked away were under a bush that hid them completely from view, and he tugged them out one by one. "Here. Enjoy."

He wouldn't bother to suggest he could learn whatever language they were written in, not with Victor right there. Maybe later, when Victor was preoccupied with finding something to kill, or with a woman, but not right now.

Victor checked the contents of the pack, careful of his claws, before shouldering it. He didn't want to stop moving yet, though he would welcome the fight if soldiers from the base caught up with them. Welcome and relish the violence and bloodshed.

"Since north seems to be acceptable to the two of you, I suggest we get going," Methos suggested. "It's been a long time since I wandered around this particular wilderness. I'd rather not encounter a booby trap in the dark." No need to mention that encountering one the wrong way could do him a permanent injury. Victor, especially, is the sort to get ideas.

Logan nodded in agreement, shouldering his own pack easily, and waving for Pierce to continue leading the way. Even with the ability to heal rapidly, it was still painful to be injured, and he agreed that he'd rather not find booby traps in the dark. He'd rather not encounter a booby trap at all, really.

"Waiting for an invitation, or for someone else to lead the way?" Victor asked Pierce, giving him an amused look.

Methos lifted an eyebrow at him. "I plan on finishing stowing my gear," he said. Taking his overcoat off was an almost physical relief in the tropical heat. He slid his sword and sheath out of the lining, then rolled the coat itself and stuffed it into the top of his pack. His BDU jacket followed his coat, and he strapped his sword across his back before picking up his pack, adjusting it so as to not interfere when he drew the sword. He hadn't carried the weapon openly in years, but then, he didn't plan on letting anyone get close enough to ask awkward questions. The rest of his weapons he left where they were, save for a pistol, which he strapped to his hip.

"Now I'm ready," he said. The weight of his sword, openly worn, was a physical reminder of the years when he hadn't had to hide what he could do in order to survive, and for once he didn't bother to hide the straightening of his spine, or the breadth of his shoulders. "Come on, then," he said, lifting an eyebrow at the pair of them. "I don't suppose either of you has given any thought to where you want to go?"

"Away from here." Victor shrugged, not particularly caring beyond that. He was far more interested in the sword Pierce had strapped across his back. He hadn't seen anyone using that as a weapon since the American Civil War, and the particular sort of sword Pierce had was unlike any of the swords used even in his earliest years. "Why a sword?" he asked, waving a hand at the weapon across Pierce's back.

Logan hadn't given the matter much more thought than Victor. "Out of this country," he added to Victor's statement about away. "Ask me again later." After he'd had a chance to stop long enough to think more than react.

"Fair enough. North and west first, then, and we'll see from there." Methos turned an amused look on Victor. "The sword? It's...a cultural thing." There was no way he was going to explain the Game to either of them. "Besides, I'm fond of it. They used to be all the rage when I was younger."

Neither really had a reply to that, and remained quiet as them moved off, heading north, Victor dropping back behind Logan to take up the rear-most position. Letting themselves fall back into the habits of a century of relying only on each other, even if they were trusting someone else this time.

It was almost like sliding backwards in time, like wiping away the centuries spent in the swiftly-developing West. He'd spent thousands of years in what today's mortals would think of as trackless wilderness, enduring with nothing more than he could carry. At least the footwear was more comfortable this time around.

He wasn't really sure what he was going to do with his two new companions. They clearly couldn't be left to their own devices any longer, not without running the risk of starting a witch hunt that could all too easily catch up Immortals as well. The Inquisition had been dangerous enough, and the anti-Communist feeling that was so strong in the West right now, combined with the threat presented by modern science, was a recipe for the sort of disaster that had thankfully been avoided, at least so far.

That said, there was really no way to make them safe enough to turn loose. Jimmy might be able to find the sort of balance necessary to live unnoticed among mortals, if he could be separated from Victor -- but Victor himself would find assimilation as difficult as Kronos had. Only willful mortal blindness kept Kronos safe, and if more of these...aberrations continued to crop up in humans, that blindness would gradually disappear. It was an interesting dilemma, to say the least.


	2. Chapter 2

As the afternoon wore on, and they got further from the base they'd been held at, Logan kept his attention divided between looking for what he considered a good camp site and keeping an eye on Victor. He knew his brother had found it more and more difficult to cope with society as it changed around them, and while right now, he was calm, the animal side of him was never far from the surface.

Victor knew Logan was keeping an eye on him, and he let a smirk spread across his face from time to time, amused and patient. Keeping far more of his attention on the jungle around them, the sounds and smells familiar enough after a couple years spent fighting in it. He tilted his head at one point, nostrils flaring as he caught a faint whiff of blood, possibly a predator's kill, maybe dead soldiers. Hesitating a moment to track the direction it was coming from.

"Something interesting?" Methos asked, glancing back over his shoulder. Immortality didn't confer heightened senses, and he was more than willing to pay attention to anything his companions noticed. The last thing they wanted was to be picked up by any of the various forces roaming around this particular jungle -- although, ironically, they would probably have less trouble with the NVA than they would with the Americans, at least at this point. Methos' Russian was excellent.

"Something dead." Victor grinned, his fangs showing at the corners of his mouth. "Think it's human, too." Which meant the body wasn't edible, but it didn't mean there wasn't something edible nearby.

"Hardly unusual, for a war zone," Methos said dryly. The look in Victor's eyes brought back vivid memories. Hopefully, the man wouldn't prove to have a Caspian-like fascination with the dead to go along with his expression. A thousand years of _that_ was enough for anyone. "They might have some ammunition, though; we could use more. Be careful."

Victor's smile spread, and he moved into the jungle with a cat-like stealth, following the scent to an empty village, staying on the edges as he watched for any sign of soldiers still there. It wasn't the village where he'd killed the officer, but one similar enough that it didn't take him much time to search it for any supplies they could use. Not much ammunition, but there was some food that wasn't slop in cans which he took, not caring if there were survivors who he was stealing from.

He made his way back to where he'd left Logan and Pierce with the same stealth he'd left, tossing the small bag he'd grabbed for what ammunition there was at Logan. "Found dinner, too," he said, holding up the pig he'd found shot behind one of the huts.

"I don't think so," Methos told him. "The smell of frying pork will carry for miles in these woods. I'm not in the mood to play nicely with any patrols that might come looking."

Chuckling, Victor shrugged. "It doesn't have to be cooked." It was just as edible for him either way, and he'd rather raw pork than whatever slop Pierce had packed for subsistence. Not that he'd mind a bit of bloodshed and mayhem if they cooked it, and a patrol showed up.

Methos stared at him for a long moment, then turned away, fighting back a grin. "At least it isn't people," he murmured. "Kronos, I could almost wish you were here." He'd fallen out of the habit of talking to his absent brother centuries ago, but at the moment, it seemed only natural to pick it up again. "Come on, then," he said, more loudly, and started off again.

Logan picked up the murmur, but didn't comment on it, filing the name away to ask Pierce about later. It wasn't the sort of name that sounded at all modern - actually, it sounded rather like something from Greek mythology, though he couldn't place it at the moment.

"People aren't much fun after they're dead." Victor had heard the murmur as well, and he grinned at Pierce's back as they started moving again, the pig draped over his shoulder for now. He'd eat later, once they'd found a place to camp for the night.

"Thank god," Methos said dryly. "I've eaten enough of Caspian's dubious stews for a dozen lifetimes." 

The sun was starting to slant low in the west, the darkness more pronounced under the trees. When the gathering shadows threatened to lower his visibility, Methos called a halt. There was a cluster of trees that looked as if it would do nicely for a shelter, and it was close enough to the river that water wouldn't be an issue. Except... "Can the two of you drink the local water?" Immortals could, but Jimmy and Victor weren't Immortals -- weren't even immortal, from what Methos could tell, despite being much more difficult to kill than the genuine article.

"Won't kill us." Victor set the pig down on the ground, sliding his pack off to drop next to it with less care. At least, he didn't think it would kill them, since he hadn't come across something that would get them even particularly sick, not since Logan had gotten his claws and they'd run. "Doubt it'll even make us sick."

"Probably won't." Logan shrugged off his own pack, letting it drop next to Victor's. "What about you?"

"It won't bother me." Methos dropped his pack a few feet from theirs and twisted, stretching his back. "Probably wouldn't even if I were mortal." He was old enough that his stomach was sure to be used to all sorts of things that would sicken a modern man, even without the protection of his Quickening. "Sometimes the younger ones will come down with something, if it's particularly virulent and they've never been exposed to it before, but the older we get, the less likely it is. I can't remember the last time I was actually ill." He looked at them narrow-eyed. "If it does make either of you sick, you'll still have to keep up. I'm not so fond of the wilderness that I want to lengthen the time we're going to spend wandering about in it."

"Even if does make us sick, it won't for long." Logan shrugged, watching Pierce stretch. Neither of them would fall behind - they made sure the other kept up if there was a concern they'd slow down. Not that they'd worried much about that.

"Good enough." Setting up a temporary camp was easy enough, even though it called on skills that Methos hadn't used in centuries. In a very short amount of time, he had a temporary shelter rigged up between two of the trees in case of rain, a fire-pit dug, and his bedroll spread out within a few feet of said pit. They'd need to keep the smoke tightly controlled, and to put the blaze out once true darkness fell, but a fire had been proof of shelter and civilization for longer than even Methos had been alive, and no campsite, however temporary, felt complete without one.

"Dry branches only," he told his pair of rescues. "Too much smoke will attract attention, and I'm not in the mood for company."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the unmistakable chill of Presence trailed its way down his spine. His sword was in his hand even before the sensation had quite registered, and he was scanning the underbrush sharply when the voice, as familiar as Presence itself, broke the sudden stillness.

"No company, brother? What about a family reunion?" 

The language itself was Hittite, though that didn't register in the wash of adrenalin that swept through Methos. If he had been somehow able to observe himself, he would have recognized his own expression as readily as he recognized Kronos' voice. No one who had gotten to know him in the past three hundred years would have, though. Distantly, the ease with which Death surfaced was reason for surprise, but the emotion floated over the surface of his mind without effect. Two months ago he would have been sick with fear. Three months ago he'd fled California due only to a glimpse of Kronos. In this place, though, and in this company, he could feel the anticipatory smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He didn't bother to hide it.

"That depends," he called back in the same language. "Are you planning to lurk in the bushes all night like Caspian in one of his sulks?"

Kronos laughed, stepping out of the brush he'd been using for concealment. He hadn't planned on making his appearance quite so soon, but he'd underestimated Methos' range and really, the timing was too good to resist. Methos himself was...unexpected, as much as a man he'd known for a thousand years could be. He'd thought his brother buried beneath the academics he'd been playing for the past few centuries. To see the man he'd ridden with so close to the surface made him want to shout with the old dark joy that Methos' presence had always brought him. He settled for giving the man his wildest grin. "I knew you weren't dead."

"Your faith in me is touching," Methos murmured. He didn't put away his sword, which only widened Kronos' grin.

Logan's claws had slid out when he heard the unfamiliar voice, and Victor rose from where he'd started to crouch next to the pig, both brothers tensing at the conversation they couldn't follow.

The arrival of the man Pierce was talking to didn't make Logan settle, not with Pierce's sword still out, and the odd exchange of words. Not as odd if he hadn't had a clue what Pierce was, but still odd enough.

Victor relaxed a little at the wild smile from the new arrival, watching him while his attention appeared fixed on Pierce. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air, trying to identify the man's scent from the myriad ones already there, moving around to get downwind of him when he couldn't pick it up. Flicking a glance at Logan, amused that his brother hadn't yet retracted his claws, watching the newcomer intently.

"Who are your pets, Methos?" Kronos asked, ignoring the glare his brother sent his way. If he wanted the man back -- and he'd never wanted anything more -- it would mean reminding him, over and over, who he was. Besides, aliases were for use in the mortal world, and that was miles away. He gave the odd pair that Methos had picked up the sort of once-over designed to raise hackles, if only to distract Methos from his irritation over the use of his real name. "They look more interesting than the usual run of cattle."

Victor grinned lazily, his fangs showing clearly as he leaned against a tree, more comfortable this time, now that he didn't have shackles holding him back. "You want to try asking us who we are, little man?"

Logan let out a low growl at the once-over that was much like the one Pierce - Methos, the newcomer had called him - had given them when he visited them in the gaol, though he didn't move. Watching him steadily, while Victor spoke for them both. Wondering just how immortal this guy was, and how well he'd deal with claws in his gut.

"It speaks," Kronos said. His smile was, to a stranger's eyes, openly cheerful. Methos recognized it for the warning sign that it was.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," he snapped. "Kronos, if you can't be civil, I'm absolutely certain that I can find an appropriate substitute for that well I left you in." The look he aimed at the three of them was pure Death, "That goes for the two of you, also." He caught Victor's eyes with his own and held them, making no attempt to hide any of the weight in his gaze, until the other man looked away.

After that little display of temper on Methos' part, Kronos was more than willing to sit back and behave himself. The last time he saw Methos, his brother had been a shell of his former self, hiding behind his young face and slender build. Kronos wasn't sure what had made the difference, but he relished it. This version of Methos was the one he could trust at his back, and if he wasn't quite as thirsty for violence as he had been two thousand years earlier, he was certainly getting there.

"Victor, Jimmy, this is Kronos." No point in using aliases, not since Kronos had outed him five minutes after his arrival. " _My_ brother. Kronos, Victor and James Logan." In Sumerian, he added, "They take a little more killing than we do, so I'd suggest being at least moderately polite."

"Manners are overrated," Kronos said in English. His pale blue eyes focused on Victor. "Although politeness to one's elders ought to be considered as more of a self-preservation technique."

Methos snorted. "I'm _your_ elder; I've never noticed that you were particularly polite to me."

Kronos' grin was feral, and much less dangerous than his earlier false cheer. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

Methos rolled his eyes. "Did you _enjoy_ spending three centuries in a well, Kronos? Because I'd be happy to arrange a longer sojourn to someplace similar." That comment sparked real anger, but -- disconcertingly -- it vanished from Kronos' face almost instantly. So. His little brother had learned some self-control over the intervening millennia. 

"I _did_ spend three centuries in a well," Kronos pointed out, and Methos had to bite back a groan when he realized that he'd said that last out loud.

Victor chuckled, his grin widening as he watched the back and forth between the two, crossing his arms over his chest casually. Utterly relaxed and not particularly concerned about the threat to strand him in a well.

"Victor Creed, actually, not Victor Logan." He didn't bother to mention why they had different surnames, just that they were different.

Logan finally relaxed with Methos' mention of Kronos as his brother, though he gave him a dark look for the threat about a well. Annoyed, but not any more worried about it than his brother. He gave Kronos a long, wary look before moving off to collect dry wood for a fire, which he'd intended to do before the man's unexpected arrival. Keeping his silence for now, more focused on getting things ready for dinner. He was hungry, and was fairly certain Victor was as well, despite his focus on Kronos and Methos at the moment.

"These are the two whose execution didn't stick?" Kronos asked after a moment. Methos nodded. "I was surprised to find you in the rescue business," the younger Immortal continued. One corner of his mouth twitched up. "Death to the rescue."

The look that Methos directed at him was distinctly unamused, and make Kronos very glad that he hadn't announced his presence by sticking a knife into Methos, as he'd planned on doing the entire way across the Pacific Ocean. Methos, unlike himself or Caspian or Silas, was infinitely more dangerous alone than he was as part of a group. Without the ties that had bound the four of them as brothers and comrades-in-arms, there was nothing to restrain Methos from doing anything he wanted. Even those bonds had done little to rein Death in once the killing had begun. Kronos couldn't help wondering what Methos could have become, all those years earlier, without the stabilizing influence of the Horsemen to keep him controlled.

"Death?" Victor raised an eyebrow curiously, giving Methos a look that held amusement along with the curiosity. "Why's he call you that?"

"It's a long story," Methos started to demur, only to be interrupted by Kronos.

"That's what the mortals called him when we last rode together." The smile on Kronos' face was one that Methos hadn't seen since the pair of them -- and Caspian and Silas as well -- had been on horseback and wearing face-paint. Unconsciously, he ran one finger down the line that had once been marked by that paint. He could almost feel the woad, so strong were the memories that Kronos was bringing back by his presence.

"So, not that long a story," Methos muttered. He was tempted to put a knife through Kronos and leave him that way until morning. If nothing else, it would put an end to the tension strung like wire between the four of them. Unfortunately, it would probably give Creed and Logan ideas.

"Huh." Victor looked thoughtful a moment before he shook it off, pushing away from the tree to move back to where he'd left the pig, crouching down to start skinning it, and preparing it for cooking. Or just eating as is, if Methos stuck by his earlier insistence that the smell of cooking pork would carry too far and attract too much attention.  
   
Logan had kept an ear out for the conversation as he gathered wood, and started a fire. Intrigued by what Methos had once been called, and wondering what Kronos had been called, if anything at all. He didn't ask, though, until he had the fire going, carefully feeding it the driest wood he'd collected.

"What did they call you, then?" he asked, looking over at Kronos as he stood up again, not willing to look up at the other man, no matter how much older he was - and that was something else he wondered, though he kept that question to himself for now.

Kronos' smile was no less sharp for being genuine. "Pestilence. Though to my face, it was usually 'oh, gods, please no'. Or something along those lines.

"All right, _Pestilence_ ," Methos said, looking up from the fire he was starting. "Why don't you do a quick sweep around and make sure we're alone. Stay in range." It wasn't a suggestion, and after a moment, Kronos melted into the woods. Methos watched him until he was out of sight, then turned back to the two almost-mortals, waiting for the inevitable onslaught of questions.

"Pestilence, Death... You have a War and Famine to hang out with?" Logan gave Methos a sardonic look as he went over to help Victor with the pig, using a knife to slice meat away from bone as Victor separated out the organs.

Victor just snorted in amusement at the names, even aware as he was of their significance. Well, in the sense that there were four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by that name, according to the one source he'd ever looked at. He hadn't actually entertained any serious thought on the matter before.

"And a pale horse to ride?" he added to Logan's question, chuckling as he scooped up the liver for himself, not about to share that.

"War and Famine are otherwise engaged at the moment," Methos said urbanely. "Silas is somewhere in Eastern Europe, and only the gods know what Caspian's doing." The false cheer slipped from his face, leaving his features as cold and remote as any ancient statue. "And yes. My horse was usually white." He wouldn't have made an issue out of it if Kronos hadn't decided to join them, but both Creed and Logan needed to know the sort of man they were dealing with. "All legends get their start somewhere, you know."

Logan nodded, digging in his pack for a plate to pile some of the meat on, watching Methos with a wary expression. The remoteness of expression was extreme enough to look almost alien to him, and it made him want to bristle and snarl. A reaction he barely held back, focusing on preparing the rest of the meat until he thought he could speak without snapping.

"You still worried about a patrol smelling this cooking, or would you rather a warm dinner?" He looked over at Victor to include him in the second part of the question, though he doubted his brother particularly cared either way.

Victor shrugged, pulling a plate out of his pack to put the liver on as his concession to manners along with using a knife to carve out chunks instead of his claws. He wasn't particularly feeling like pandering so much to humanity as to go so far as to cook his meal right now.

"Go ahead," Methos sighed, exasperation slipping back into his features. "Kronos is absolutely incapable of anything resembling subtlety, and I very much doubt the pair of you are any different. If he doesn't find us a fight before the sun comes up, I'll be more than surprised. That man could start a fight in a roomful of Quakers." He stopped, lowering his voice and catching Logan's eyes with his own. Creed wasn't the sort to listen to warnings, but Logan might, and he might be able to get it through his brother's thick head.

"Don't let Creed push Kronos too hard," he warned. "He's probably the most dangerous man either of you will ever meet, and if he gets irritated enough, he'll make you wish he'd killed you. I know that neither of you is used to being anything more than the deadliest thing in sight, but you need to believe me when I tell you that you're both badly outclassed when it comes to Kronos." _Or to me_ , he doesn't say, because this isn't a challenge. "I'd tell you how many people he's killed, but I don't think you'd believe me." _Especially once you found out that my count's even higher._

Logan held Methos's gaze for a moment, and nodded. "Being deadly isn't the same as being dangerous," he offered in acknowledgement, searching for a moment for a stick that he could strip of bark and use to spear some of the chunks of meat to roast them. He didn't make any promises he'd keep Victor under control, though he'd try to make sure he kept in mind that pushing someone they didn't know very well wasn't a good idea.

The prospect of a fight made Victor smile, his teeth stained with blood. He ignored the quieter conversation between Logan and Methos, turning his attention to the jungle around them instead.

"It is in his case," Methos said. "I rode with him for a thousand years; we're as close as any of my kind can be, and there's still always the chance that he'll decide to try for me tomorrow. Or even tonight." He frowned. "If that happens, you need to get as far away as you can. If he decides to go for one of you, I'll intervene, but don't expect me to die for you. Either of you." He shook his head. "This was a complication I really could have done without. Do me a favour, please. The name he's using for me? Forget you ever heard it, and get your brother to do the same. It could make you a target."

"Why?" Logan asked bluntly, raising an eyebrow at Methos. "What's so special about your name?"

He wasn't surprised that Methos wouldn't die for them, and he hadn't expected him to. He wanted to know why Methos told him to get away if Kronos went after Methos, but that question could remain unspoken for the moment, in favor of finding out what made a name so dangerous to know.

"The older an Immortal gets, the more interesting we become to other Immortals, and not in a good way. I'm old enough that most of my kind think I don't exist, but if they thought you knew where I was..." He shrugged. "You could end up in very unpleasant hands indeed, and so could Victor." He hadn't intended to tell them this much, but Kronos had put both of them in danger by opening his mouth.

Logan gave Methos a long look, almost disbelieving. "Right." He checked the meat on the stick, though he knew it wouldn't be cooked through yet. He would try to forget the name, and talk to Victor about doing the same. Or at least, not using it, out of a sense of self-preservation. Though he wasn't always sure how far Victor's sense of survival actually went sometimes. Not far enough, sometimes.

Well, he'd tried. If they couldn't be discreet, they could always be disposed of. Methos winced when he realized which particular lines of thought he'd fallen into. It was easier with real mortals; they were so fragile, so short-lived, that remembering to be careful was almost second-nature. Here, though, where caution meant weakness, the old patterns came back without the need to summon them. Kronos' presence would only make it worse. By the time Methos got out of this bloody jungle, he wouldn't be fit for human company.

He fished his latest journal and a pen out of his pack and lay down close enough to the fire to catch the light on its pages. His journals had been distractions and sounding boards for millennia, something familiar that he'd kept no matter where or how he was living. Beginning today's entry was almost a relief.


	3. Chapter 3

Victor was awake early the next morning, prowling restlessly through the underbrush around the camp, listening and sniffing for intruders, or someone human other than them. Spoiling for a fight, despite the warning from Methos not to attract attention. He reasoned that if the patrol came to the camp, it wasn't _him_ attracting the attention, and it would be the better part of not being found to get rid of the patrol.

He grinned with feral delight when he caught the first whiff of soldiers near the river, smelling of cigarettes and gun oil and sweat. Victor followed the scent down-river a while, until he spotted the soldiers through the trees, recognizing the uniforms of US soldiers. He hesitated a moment, torn between the desire to just rip into them, and the thought that he really ought to let someone back at camp know before he did that.

A snarl crossed his face as he grimaced, and turned back to camp, moving as quietly as he had approached the patrol, crouching next to his brother to wake him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Patrol, down-river from here. Heading our direction when I spotted them." He kept his voice low, though he expected one or the other of the Immortals was awake to hear him. He didn't trust them at his back in a fight yet, though, not like he trusted Logan.

Logan rolled out of his bedroll at Victor's words, though he didn't immediately get up to follow Victor toward the patrol he'd mentioned, making sure Methos and Kronos were both awake and aware of what Victor had found first. Waiting to see what their reaction to the news would be - or rather, what Methos would have in mind, since he'd gotten the impression Kronos probably would be of a like mind to Victor.

Kronos smiled. Recognizing the expression, Methos sent his brother a narrow-eyed glare before turning his attention to Victor.

"How far were they? And were they American or Vietnamese?" He glanced over his shoulder at Kronos, who was getting their things together. "How's your Russian?"

"Not bad. I spent some time in the NKVD during the purges."

"Of course you did," Methos muttered. He lifted an eyebrow at Victor. "Is it possible to avoid them?" Might as well find out if the man were even capable of that sort of thinking.

"American, and probably about ten minutes behind me." Victor hadn't bothered to roll out his bedroll, and his pack was still where he'd dropped it the night before, leaving him with nothing to worry about in the way of packing.

"Might be able to avoid them," he added after a long pause, though he didn't think there was much point to doing so. Not when they'd find the camp, and know someone was there. There wasn't enough time to truly make it look like there'd been no one there the night before.

"I'm not running," Kronos said flatly, and watched Methos' face tighten with exasperation.

"You realize we'll have to kill them to the last man," he said. Kronos grinned, but didn't respond. Methos knew damn well that killing that patrol was the only thing to do, and given enough time with his own thoughts, he'd talk himself into it. His brother changed to reflect those around him; always had. It was one of the things that made Creed and Logan useful rather than a burden.

"All right; fine," Methos said after a moment. "We'll kill them."

Victor grinned, his fangs showing. Glad for the chance to kill something, his claws elongating, deadly sharp and vicious in appearence. Waiting and listening for the first sounds of the patrol hacking their way through the jungle, bouncing lightly on his toes.

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Victor said of having to kill the entire patrol. It was, after all, what he'd had in mind for a good start to the day, and it was good to know he wasn't the only one who thought like that.

Logan wasn't as gleeful as Victor about the killing of men who he had, at some level, called comrade. Or at least, fought on the same side as, even if now they were his enemies. It didn't mean he wasn't looking forward to the fight, though, and he could feel the adrenaline kick in, sharpening already heightened senses and making the backs of his hands itch where his own claws would emerge.

"It's bloody Caspian all over again," Methos said, looking up from his guns to glare at Kronos. 

"I think this one will take care of more than women and children, though," Kronos told him. "I haven't seen any evidence of cannibalism yet, either."  
   
"Says the man who used to eat Caspian's cooking with every evidence of enjoyment," Methos sniped back. With Kronos next to him, the upcoming fight seemed almost routine, and he was trying very hard to remind himself that they were about to slaughter a dozen human beings. It wasn't working very well, especially when Kronos grinned like that.

Logan held back a comment on what Victor would probably do with women, doubting that Kronos would much care, and not too sure about Methos either. Focusing instead on the approaching patrol, the sounds of which he was starting to pick up - a machete hacking through vegetation, the fainter sounds of footsteps on damp leaf litter.

Victor ignored the comments between Methos and Kronos for the most part, though he snorted at the bit about taking care of women and children. The former he had better uses for than killing outright, and the latter he didn't consider much of a fight. Which made him wonder about this Caspian they were talking about, if not for long. The looming fight was far more interesting, anyway.

"Right," Methos said, standing up. "Here we go, then." He slanted a glance at Kronos. "Try and restrain yourself. We don't want the whole army crawling around here investigating if you decide to get...creative." His attention shifted, taking in Victor and Logan as well. "That includes you two."

This time, the crack of a branch was loud enough for him and Kronos to hear. The sardonic, slightly amused attitude fell away like the mask it was, and Methos stopped fighting the deep shiver of anticipation for the bloodshed that was about to happen. Kronos had stopped watching him. With a fight in the offing, they'd both become perfectly predictable to the other. 

"Why don't we try flanking them?" he suggested. "Creed and Logan, you two stay here; draw their attention, and we'll take them from the sides." It was simple enough, and probably unnecessary, but strategy had always leapt unbidden to his mind. Kronos nodded, and looked questioningly at Creed and Logan.

Victor shrugged, grinning at Methos. "Whatever makes you happy." He actually liked the idea of drawing the soldiers' attention, fairly certain that would be easily enough accomplished when he started killing them.

Logan nodded to Methos and Kronos, agreeing with the tactic without speaking, keeping his claws in by sheer force of will, knowing they would leave distinctive wounds that would have the army looking for him. Victor's kills could at least be passed off as a wild animal, if not as well in this context.

Methos waited until Kronos had disappeared into the trees before following suit. The first shouts of alarm echoed through the woods before he'd gone ten paces, and he swore. Someone -- he wasn't placing any bets just yet as to who -- had gotten impatient. Speeding into a run, he shot the first two soldiers he came across, hoping that Kronos would have the sense to herd the others towards the waiting trap. They couldn't afford any survivors.

Victor paced the clearing impatiently after Methos and Kronos had slipped away, waiting only long enough to start smelling the patrol as well as hearing them before he started toward them, grinning as he heard the first shout of alarm. He tore into the first of the soldiers, ripping his throat out without stopping as he charged at the next one.

He felt the impact of bullets, and roared in pain, picking up the soldier who'd fired at him by the throat and tossing him against a tree, hearing the wet crack of breaking bones when he impacted.

Logan followed Victor once he heard his brother's shout of pain, giving up on keeping his claws in when a soldier took a shot at him. He didn't get a chance to complete the swing with his rifle that he started before Logan gutted him. The soldier dropped with a scream of pain that became a gurgle when Logan's claws went through his throat.

It was a short fight, and a messy one, and it blurred like it always did into the thousands he'd been in before. Mortals always died the same way, eyes fixing on something he'd never managed to catch a glimpse of before going permanently empty. He found Methos before it was over, and got to stand back-to-back with his brother in the middle of battle for the first time in two thousand years; got to watch the cool efficiency that hadn't changed even an iota, though Methos stuck with the guns the entire time, not even reaching for a dagger, let alone his sword. Creed and Logan -- well. If more mortals could kill like these two, the species in general might have been more interesting.

The fight was over too soon for Victor, and he snarled in frustration, though he managed to keep himself from turning toward the two Immortals. If only because Logan was right there, and reminded him that they weren't enemies, that he owed them. He wiped the blood from his claws on a scrap of clean fabric ripped from one of the uniforms, letting them retract slowly as he let the rush of the violence calm him, at least as much as it could.

Logan made sure Victor wasn't going to do something stupid before he retracted his own claws, wincing slightly at the pain as they receeded back through his hands and into his arms. Watching Methos and Kronos where they stood in the center of the mess of bodies scattered on the jungle floor. He didn't trust himself to speak yet, though, and so didn't, taking deep breaths to clear the haze of battle from his mind.

"Good fight," Kronos said, grinning brightly. Methos gave him a long, cool look that was close enough to the sort they'd exchanged over bodies two millenia ago that it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. 

"We should be moving on," he said after a long moment, his voice as distant as his eyes. Kronos knew better than to push him for more just at that moment. "Get everything together."

Logan nodded, making sure Victor was moving toward the clearing they had camped in before following, gathering his pack and slinging it over his shoulders as Victor did the same with his own, the two working together to obliterate the signs of the fire pit and the shelter that had been built the night before.

Victor was quieter, calmer as they finished taking apart the camp, the destruction helping as much as the violence had earlier. Ready as soon as the Immortals were, itching to move on, head north and away from the life he'd had before the fiasco with his and Logan's senior officer.

Methos was moving automatically, his mind miles -- or centuries -- distant. It was a look that Kronos knew well, and he left his brother alone while they broke camp. He doubted anyone else would even have been able to spot it; still, it was a relief when, after about half an hour's travel, the worst of the distance slipped from Methos' eyes. Despite what Methos thought, Kronos had learned some caution in the intervening centuries, and he wanted to be out of the American zone before Methos started coming up with the more ingenious sorts of ideas of which he was capable.

The distance in Methos's eyes made Logan frown, and he hung back from the Immortals during the first part of the day's hike, giving him room until the distance faded from his gaze.

Victor kept back as well, not needing Logan to keep him away from the Immortals at the moment, though he prowled further out, scouting ahead and to the side simply to keep himself occupied with more than watching the others. It wasn't as interesting when everyone was quiet.

Methos called a halt about an hour before noon, not wanting to spend the hottest part of the day wandering through the jungle. The trees provided enough shade to drop the ambient temperature far enough to prevent the heatstroke that Immortals weren't necessarily immune to, and he ignored Kronos' comments about getting soft after too much time out of the desert.

When they stopped, Victor settled at the base of a tree, his pack dropped to the ground next to him as he leaned back, his eyes half-closed. Taking the moment to doze, rather like a cat, though he listened to noises around him, one corner of his mouth twitching up at the comments exchanged by the two Immortals.

Logan dropped his pack next to Victor's, though he stayed on his feet, watching Methos and Kronos for a long moment before approaching them. Curious about the names Methos had mentioned before, particularly the one they had both compared Victor to.

"Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?" He raised an eyebrow at Methos, his hands in his pockets. Curiosity in his gaze despite his gruff tone and stoic expression. He'd learned to hide a lot around Victor, and the habits stuck.

"You can ask," Methos said, putting aside his journal. The emphasis on the last word was slight but audible. Next to him, he could feel Kronos' attention sharpening, focus returning from whatever thoughts or memories had temporarily claimed it.

Logan gave him a sardonic half-smile. "Who's Caspian, other than someone people called Famine once?" He'd ask why they compared him and Victor after, if he thought he needed clarification.

"Our third brother," Methos answered. "He has some...socialization issues." It was a polite way of saying that even compared to the other Horsemen, Caspian had been distinctly disturbed. Kronos gave a snort of laughter.

"That's one way of putting it." he said.

Not enough for Logan to puzzle out quite what the comparison between him and Victor was, but the phrasing of Methos's answer made him doubt he'd get more information without pushing more than he thought would be safe. "What about the fourth, Silas?"

Methos looked briefly down at the journal in his lap. "Silas is different." He gave Logan the full force of his stare. "He's not a monster." Not really. The inability to adapt to modern ethics was nothing like the calculating destruction the other three were as capable of as breathing. "He likes animals." And would knock an infant's brains out against a tree as quickly as Kronos.

The dichotomy wasn't entirely comprehensible, not to modern minds -- but there it was. "If I were helpless, I'd rather Silas stumble upon me than Caspian or Kronos."

"Only because you know me, Methos," Kronos said, in that too-sweet tone of his that meant trouble later.

Logan met Methos's gaze face-on, his expression flat and almost blank, unwilling to show fear, even with a cold trickle of sweat making its way down his spine. That Methos would rather have Silas find him than the other two had a thoughtful expression cross Logan's face before he shoved the feeling down. He'd have time enough to think once they were moving again.

"How long did you travel together?" he asked, despite starting to think he was pushing a bit more than he should. Wanting to know more about these two he and Victor had thrown in with before he was willing to trust them even as far as Victor apparently was.

"A thousand years, give or take," Methos said. 

"Until you dropped me in a well." Kronos didn't look nearly as annoyed as Methos had been expecting for the past two millenia, which was more than a little ominous.

"You deserved it," he said, than glanced up at Logan. "Sit down, would you? Stop looming."

Logan pulled his hands out of his pockets as he took the invitation to sit, watching Kronos with the same guarded curiosity he did Methos. "Why drop Kronos in a well?" he asked, that curiosity shading his voice as well.

Victor continued to listen from where he was sitting, letting Logan's curiosity feed him information as well, taking the lazier approach. Though there were questions he'd ask that he didn't think Logan would get to, not soon, and that would be as easily answered by finding fights where he could watch them in the thick of things.

"Yes; that's what I'd like to know," Kronos said, blue eyes sharpening. Methos managed to keep his wince off of his face, but barely.

"You wouldn't listen," he said blandly. "I tried telling you -- I'd been trying to tell you for a hundred years -- that we couldn't keep it up. Humanity was starting to build cities, to collect armies. Four of us on horseback were headed for a nasty fall, and I didn't feel like becoming some petty king's plaything."

It was more of an explanation than he'd have given Logan alone, but with Kronos sitting there with _that_ expression on his face, Methos didn't have much of a choice.

Logan watched them a moment before he asked another question, a vague idea forming at the back of his mind, a curiosity about what could happen if they didn't part ways once they'd gotten safely out of American territory. Only this time, he directed it at Kronos rather than Methos. "Why did you come looking for Methos?"

Kronos scowled. "I don't recall giving you permission to ask me questions."

"Consider _me_ curious," Methos said sharply. The last thing he wanted was for Kronos to start a fight with Creed and Logan. There was no way he'd be able to just tangle with one of them.

"Oh, well, in that case," Kronos shrugged. "Revenge. Reunion. I was going to stick a knife in him and keep him somewhere until he decided to play nicely, but by the time I found him, well." The smile on Kronos' lips was far from pleasant. "He was already going the way I wanted him to go."

Revenge was a desire Logan could understand very well, and memory darkened his expression a moment, a glitter of old rage in his eyes before he shoved it back down. He leaned back, watching them again. "And which way was that?"

Victor had sat up a bit at Kronos's response to Logan, his eyes opening again to watch the trio warily, his attention particularly focused on Kronos. Waiting to see if he'd try to hurt Logan, and idly wondering just what it might take to kill an Immortal, if he went after him. Especially with the comment about putting a knife in Methos. Wondering just how much that'd slow the Immortal down.

"Oh, telling would spoil it," Kronos said, not taking his eyes off of Methos, whose expression, though outwardly calm, was as dangerous as a drawn sword. Methos didn't enjoy being reminded that Kronos could read him as easily as he could read others. 

"I've been a good deal more civilized over the past few centuries than my _dear_ brothers," Methos said, after a moment. 

"For a given value of civilized," Kronos said sarcastically. He took a moment to send a warning look at Victor, whose expression didn't bode well for anyone.

Victor met Kronos's warning look with a slow smile, a predatory gleam in his eyes that said he wasn't going to be intimidated by something so simple as a look, and he wasn't going to be easily controlled.

Logan shrugged, knowing without looking at Victor that his brother was paying attention to the whole thing, and probably getting more ideas than was always entirely safe. He looked at Kronos again, raising an eyebrow. "You said reunion. You just trying to get Methos back, or are you going to look for the other two?"

"Oh, that _is_ an interesting thought," Kronos said, eyes lighting up.

"I'm not dealing with Caspian again," Methos said flatly, hoping to slice the legs out from under the idea. At the moment, he could have happily taken Logan to pieces for the untimely question, and that more than anything was proof that the last thing he needed was to see Caspian and Silas again. Kronos -- and Creed and Logan -- were proving more than disruptive to the careful equilibrium he normally maintained between Death and the rest of the world.

"Besides, I haven't heard anything about Silas since the Soviets retook Byelorussia. Anything could have happened to him once the war ended."

Logan gave a non-committal grunt, a thoughtful expression in his eyes, though he did his best to keep it from his face. Silent for a moment before he asked another question. "What do you intend to do, then? Other than travel, and get out of Vietnam."

He didn't ask what they - or Methos, really - intended to do with him and Victor. He wasn't about to put his fate in someone else's hands, not that easily. It was enough that he'd had to trust Methos to get him and Victor out of prison in the first place.

"Honestly? Travel, and get out of Vietnam," Methos admitted. "I really hadn't expected the pair of you. This was all very last-minute -- and your not being Immortal changes things more than a little bit." Kronos didn't say anything. At this point, the best thing to do was to let Methos take himself where Kronos wanted it to go. It would happen eventually. He knew Methos too well to think otherwise.

"How?" Logan leaned forward a little, his elbows resting on his knees as he watched Methos. "And changes what things?" Not travel plans, since that was fairly obvious, but he was curious, and pushing more than he might usually, simply because he knew these two weren't anything like the sort of people he'd dealt with most of his life.

Victor leaned back against the tree again, watching through hooded eyes as Logan kept asking questions. Wondering a bit where his brother's thoughts were going, and just what that train of thought would bring them.

"Were you planning on teaching them?" Kronos asked, visibly amused. "Have you even had a student since Byron?"  
   
Methos' head came up sharply. "I'd ask you how you know about that, but I'm not sure I want the answer. If you've done anything to him, you'll damn well face me."  
   
"Calm down," Kronos advised. "I didn't hurt him." The lazy amusement never left his eyes. "He's far too interesting to do anything permanent to." After a long moment, Methos relaxed. The tension left Kronos' frame a moment later, and much more subtly. It was another few seconds before they took their eyes off of each other.  
   
"There are things you'd need to know if you were Immortal," Methos said after a second. "Some of them you should still probably learn." How to switch identities -- if they hadn't already learned. How to avoid notice in tax rolls, banks, census records. How to blend in.  
   
"Or we could conquer part of Asia," Kronos said blandly. "Set up our own country."  
   
" **Not** happening, Kronos," Methos said. "I'm not playing nuclear politics, and you'd have us living in a parking lot inside of a week."

"It would be fun." Victor spoke before Logan could, an amused smirk on his face. "Conquering a country."

Logan gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, though he knew his brother wouldn't be bothered by encouraging Kronos, and antagonizing Methos. Not if it gave him the opportunity to kill and indulge himself in whatever he wanted.

"What sort of things are you thinking we should learn?" Logan asked, before either of them could say something to Victor. They might be things they'd learned, or things they hadn't, but it would be a better than letting Victor bait someone into a fight.

Methos ignored Victor in favor of answering Logan's question. The last thing he wanted was for Kronos and Victor to team up. 'Disastrous' wasn't a strong enough word for the idea. "Mostly, I'd say you need to learn to stay off official radar. That's more a self-control thing than otherwise, though."

"First time we've gotten really caught." Logan shrugged, knowing part of that was because he hadn't quite kept up enough with Victor to stop things before he'd gone and killed the officer.

"Which means that now they'll have a reason to start digging into your backgrounds, probably for the first time ever," Methos said pointedly. "They'll start linking identities -- I certainly don't believe that this is the first time you two have been in the military -- and it won't take them long to figure out everywhere and everyone you've ever been." It was his own worst nightmare, and the main reason that he began the set up work on his identities fifty or sixty years in advance these days. "Governments hold onto documents forever. For that, you can blame the Egyptians, and the invention of bureaucracy."  
   
"Says the man who's been holding onto his journals since the human race started writing things down," Kronos said. Methos rolled his eyes.

Logan wasn't sure they'd connect all the dots, all the way back, but he was certain they'd connect them far enough. It wasn't like they'd actually changed their names with each war, just joining up with a new generation, and letting them think they were their own sons. If they even bothered to notice.

"How bad is it?" Methos asked, lifting an eyebrow. "If they start -- once they start -- looking, how long will it take them to figure out that something funny is going on?"

"We've fought in every major war since the American Civil War, never actually had to change our names." Logan shrugged, though he wasn't as comfortable as he pretended to be about them finding just how long lived they were. "Don't know if they'll connect us back to where and when we were born, but too close for comfort." Made him rather glad he didn't have any family other than Victor. No one to worry about who wasn't right here.

"Oh, fucking _Christ_ ," Methos said irritably. He'd used a throwaway identity to check out Logan and Creed, but it didn't change the fact that he'd left a trail connecting himself to them. "How have you not been carted off to a lab before this?"

"Every American war?" Kronos asked Victor, bored with the lecture already.

"It's a career." Victor shrugged, not any more interested in the lecture than Kronos. He hadn't particularly cared if someone connected their stints in the military, fairly confident in the ability between him and Logan to keep themselves out of any sort of permanent trouble - or paying anyone who gave them trouble back with more than they could dish out.

"No one noticed." Logan's shrug was an almost identical echo of Victor's as he answered Methos's question. "Or saw what they wanted to see." Not his fault if they were blind to what was right in front of them. He'd actually been entertained by it, from time to time. He'd known it was a danger, and it had been a thrill that he'd enjoyed more than the fighting itself.

"Mortals are idiots," Kronos said. "You know that."

"Yes, well, now that they've been given reason to look, I'd imagine they'll put the pieces together pretty bloody quickly, wouldn't you?" He scowled. "I'm willing to bet that will mean Special Forces, in addition to whatever else they would have sent after us."

Victor snorted, curling up one lip in amusement. "Doesn't make them any less fragile than the regular soldiers." Fragile in the sense that they could be tossed like so many ragdolls once he got close enough to hit them. Among other ways of killing them.

"I know they'll put it together quickly. Once they go through enough archives of paper." Logan didn't bother to keep his annoyance hidden at the moment. "It's not something they can do overnight."

"It won't take long. They'll find people, too, who knew you in Korea, and during the Second World War. Maybe even some from the First, if they really go looking." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Christ. What a mess." Looking up, he sighed. "Right. That puts sneaking back into the West right out. They'll have your photographs in every police station west of the Berlin Wall."

Logan didn't mention he hadn't actually been thinking of going back, even if he did miss the wilderness of home sometimes. Especially now, there was a chance to change the routine life had become in the last century. Fight in a war, retreat to the wilderness for a decade, fight another war. Looking for something more of a challenge, even if he wasn't sure quite what he wanted yet.

"Laos it is, then," Methos said. If he were on his own, he would probably have gone to Tibet; might have done so even with Creed and Logan in tow. Kronos was a different story. He wasn't taking his brother anywhere near one of the last sanctuaries he had left. "We're going to attract a lot of attention."


	4. Chapter 4

The itch between Logan's shoulderblades that had persisted all through their trek north and west across Vietnam started to fade a bit as they entered Laos, avoiding border patrols and checkpoints where they could possibly be recognized and stopped.

It was something that Logan knew Victor wasn't entirely pleased about, but he was privately much happier with the idea of laying low for a while, maybe a few years, before doing something to attract attention again. Especially in the violent fashion that was Victor's favorite past-time, and was slowly becoming less enjoyable for him, or had been.

He was actually feeling more comfortable with the thought of that sort of casual and unrestrained violence than he had in years, and almost surprised at himself for it. Perhaps it was the company he was keeping, even if Kronos did rather remind him of Victor if his brother were more inclined to indulge his intelligence.

"No longer feel like there's a sniper's bead on your back, Jimmy?" Victor hadn't missed Logan relaxing, now that they were clear of the border and the patrols they'd had to creep past and avoid.

Logan shrugged. "Not an American sniper, anyway." More that they were where they'd intended to go, for now, than anything else. They wouldn't be out of danger, not really, until either they'd carved out a place for themselves beyond the reach of those who'd try to capture them, or the bureaucracy had buried their paper trail again.

"All bullets are inconvenient," Methos said dryly, "not just American ones."

"They're better than arrows," Kronos shrugged. "Easier to remove."

"For a given value of ea--" Methos didn't get a chance to finish his retort. Something punched him in the chest; then he was blinking up at Kronos, who was white-faced with fury. He tried to draw breath, and was rewarded with the all-too-familiar pain of lungs that were rapidly filling with blood. He coughed once, and had just enough time to taste iron and copper before darkness claimed him.

Victor had heard the faint pop of someone firing a moment before Methos dropped, rather like any human he'd met. He flicked a glance at Kronos as he started to move forward, his claws extending as he headed in the direction he'd heard the pop. Not waiting for someone to tell him to find the person who'd made the shot, or to tell him to stop. He intended to take out his surprise and simmering irritation at the decided lack of violence in the last several weeks out on whoever was unlucky enough to be in his way.

Logan didn't follow immediately, looking down at Methos with a frown on his face. He looked dead, something he hadn't experienced much before, and it confused him. Was this how all Immortals looked when they took what would be a fatal blow for a normal human? Or was it just the extent of the damage the bullet caused?

"How long before he's back on his feet?" he asked, looking over at Kronos.

Kronos shrugged. "No idea. I've never seen him take a bullet before, and he's significantly older than he was the last time we were together." He raised his voice, pitching it so that the now-vanished Victor could hear him. "You take whoever it was alive, Creed, or you'll fucking well wish you had." Glancing back down at Methos' recumbent form, he smiled reminiscently. "He's always been able to take an incredible amount of damage, though."

Victor snarled silently at the order to bring the person back alive, but he hadn't heard an order to bring the person back unharmed. Or to bring back anyone alive other than the person who'd made the shot, if there were more than one. He grinned to himself, the expression almost gleeful, and he had no doubt it was frightening to whoever was out there, if they could see it.

Logan watched Methos curiously, keeping alert for other signs of someone more than the sniper Victor was after as he waited for Methos to wake up. Or perhaps revive was the better word, since he really looked dead. "So it's not that Immortals don't die, it's that they don't stay dead, if the wound would kill a human," he observed, thinking aloud more than anything.

"Basically," Kronos admitted, just as Methos gasped and opened his eyes, struggling to sit up and clear his lungs of blood. He hadn't expected Methos back that quickly -- he himself still took a good half an hour to recover from that kind of wound, and not for the first time he wondered just how long Methos had been Immortal before their first encounter, wondered what the age difference between them really was. "Welcome back, brother," he said, smirking. Methos gave him a truly vicious glare between coughs, and there was no way that the blood he spit onto Kronos' boots was an accident.

"Creed's out apprehending your assailant," Kronos continued. "I was going to deal with whoever it was, but I think I'll give him to you instead. It's been a long time since I gave you anyone to play with."

"How generous of you," Methos said, rubbing at his chest and wincing. "I think I'll have to decline, however. We don't really have that kind of time right now."

Victor dropped to all fours, bounding toward the man with the gun as soon as he'd spotted him, using the greater momentum that he could build up with bound like that to slam into the human before he could get off more than one shot. He heard the crunch of breaking bones, and grinned at the sudden huff of breath rushing out of his victim.

Standing, he chuckled as he reached for the gun the man still held in his hand, growling, and wrapping his hand around the man's wrist when he wouldn't let go, squeezing until he felt bones creaking, and the gun dropped from nerveless fingers. It didn't take much effort at that point to get the man back to the others, the gun tucked into Victor's belt for now.

Kronos lifted an eyebrow at Methos' blood-spattered form. "Since when do you not _make_  the time?" Methos ignored him, flicking a glance at Logan's expression before turning to his own pack. He had no desire to wander around in the tropics in blood-soaked clothing. Insect bites would heal as fast as any other minor injury, but it didn't make them any less annoying. He stripped off jacket and shirt, and was in the process of pulling the new one back over his head when Victor pushed the shooter into their midst. He was mildly surprised to find that Creed had listened to Kronos, and genuinely shocked at his own positive reaction to the realization that the four of them would make a workable team, once the dynamics of power were clearly outlined.

Logan had almost taken a step back in surprise when Methos revived, but managed to keep still, even if he couldn't keep the surprise out of his expression. Victor's return with a still-living human sniper made it easier to hide the surprise, shoving it aside in favor of keeping an eye on the sniper - who looked like he was little more than a boy to Logan. Though he had been thinking that the soldiers looked more and more like boys with each passing war, even if they hadn't.

Shoving the man to the ground, Victor gave him a feral smile that was a warning not to get up, even if he were inclined to try, with ribs that were at least cracked, and one injured wrist. Injuries Victor would be happy to add to, if he were given the chance.

Methos' best intentions vanished at the look on the sniper's face. The disbelief and the terror the man clearly felt at seeing his victim alive and unhurt was a visceral echo of the fear the Horsemen had spread in their wake for a thousand years, and Kronos' vicious glee at Methos' shoulder served only to reinforce the dark enjoyment that welled up in his soul like blood from a wound.

As Methos turned to look at his assailant, Kronos kept his gaze firmly on Methos. He watched as the detachment his brother had been preserving so carefully struggled to maintain control before slipping away completely; saw the fire that kindled in the back of those green eyes. It was like watching the death of the stranger that had worn his brother's face, and the look that Methos directed at their hapless captive was, for the first time since they had reunited, Death unrestrained. Kronos didn't bother to hide the smile that sight brought unbidden to his lips. 

"How long has it been since we flayed someone?" he asked. It was a struggle to keep the anticipation out of his voice, but he managed, not wanting to jar Methos out of the mood the bullet had put him in. The longer his brother kept it up, the harder it would be for him to walk away from it. All Kronos really had to do was to stand back and let Methos fall.

"Since _we've_ flayed someone?" Methos asked. As he spoke, his voice deepened and slowed, the altered tones as familiar to Kronos as his own voice. "Two thousand years, give or take a century. I haven't flayed anyone since the fifteenth century." His smile was genuine, and it was Death's. "I'm willing to bet that it's like riding a bicycle, though -- something you never quite forget."

Victor chuckled quietly, his grin still in place as he looked down at the hapless man crouched on the ground. Surrounded, the human wasn't going anywhere, and certainly wasn't getting out of this alive. Not that he'd figured that out yet, still caught in the grip of his fear of Methos, but Victor almost hoped he tried to run when he did.

Logan wasn't as certain of the difference in Methos, not yet, but he wasn't going to complain if it meant they did something more than keep moving. Even he was starting to get antsy for something, if only watching someone else at work. He glanced at the human again, a flash of pity in his eyes for a brief moment before it was hidden by a curiosity as he wondered just how long it would take the human to die.

"Creed." This time, the detachment in Methos' voice was Death's. "Why don't you get our guest on his feet? I think I'd like to save him for the evening halt. Anticipation always makes things more interesting." Crouching down, he put an almost gentle hand on the sniper's face, forcing the man to look at him. The mortal was reluctant at first, but once their eyes met he seemed hypnotized, unable to look away. Kronos had seen this particular effect before, and more than once, and he glanced up at Logan and Creed, wondering if they'd realized yet what, exactly, they were looking at. When he felt like it, Methos was a killer without parallel. 

"Do you speak English?" Methos was asking, in the gracious tones that marked him at his most dangerous. The sniper shook his head, never taking his eyes from Methos as the latter switched from English to a language that Kronos presumed was Laotian. His tone never changed, but the sniper's face paled, and he started to shake. Methos patted his cheek gently, almost paternally, before straightening.

"Get him up, and let's keep moving," he said, presumably to Creed, though his eyes went straight to Kronos. The latter shivered in anticipation.

Victor reached down, pulling the man to his feet with a hand wrapped around the back of his neck. Following Methos's order without even the silent complaint he'd made earlier, instincts all telling him not to challenge the leader, not now. He wasn't, after all, nearly as stupid as some people assumed.

Logan waited for Victor to get the man to his feet, falling in at the rear once they started moving again, watching Methos with a thoughful expression in his eyes. This was not the sarcastic and irritated Captain Pierce who'd gotten them out of the prison earlier, even if he wasn't entirely different. Just something this modern world wasn't prepared to deal with, that hid and slept because Methos couldn't be this person in the world they'd left behind when they'd escaped the base.

"Finally," Kronos said in Hittite. "It seems you've made an impression on our subordinates." The look Methos shot in his direction was enough to make an impression on him as well. He'd forgotten how volatile Methos could be when he was like this. This was the man who could leave a brother in a well and never look back, and even though Kronos had been trying to get that man to resurface since they'd first re-encountered one another, the sudden fulfillment of his wishes still raised the hair on the back of his neck; made him wonder if the reappearance of Death was another of Methos' charades.

Listening to Kronos speak, Logan almost wished he had the opportunity to ask for language lessons, because not being able to understand what was being said was frustrating. Particularly when he had a suspicion that he or Victor or both were the subject of whatever remark it was Kronos made. He suppressed a snort, turning his attention more to the jungle around them, since it had proven to be a bit more dangerous than just the chance of an American sniper.

There wasn't anything else to cause them trouble the rest of the day, Victor keeping a close eye on their captive while they traveled, and as they made camp late in the afternoon. He had been almost disappointed when the man hadn't even tried to run, even though he was curious about just what Methos had in mind to do with him. It would have been satisfying to chase the human, even if he couldn't kill him.

Methos set up his own bedroll as usual, pulling out his journal and settling in to write. He could feel Kronos' impatience from across the campsite, and their prisoner's fear, and wanted trying to settle things in his own mind before taking a step he couldn't back down from; wanted to decide just how far he planned to descend -- if that decision was still his. Wrenching himself free of the Horsemen had been the most difficult thing he'd ever done, and now that his temper had cooled, he wasn't sure he wanted to step back into something that was even remotely similar.

Then again, he wasn't sure that he would be able to deny himself for much longer.

Logan set up the fire-pit and started on putting together dinner, using the activity to keep himself from asking questions, at least for now. He was picking up on the tension in the camp, and was beginning to wonder if there were any others like the sniper Victor was still guarding that he could kill, just to pass the time. They, after all, wouldn't be getting anything less than they expected, just not from whatever enemy they thought they were dealing with.

Leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, Victor watched the two Immortals out of the corner of his eyes while ostensibly watching the prisoner. Wondering just how long it would take them to figure out what they were planning to do, his impatience for something to happen beginning to build.

"Methos." His brother had been staring at nothing for five minutes, and the look on his face suggested that he was thinking things that Kronos didn't want him thinking. "Are you planning on dealing with the baggage before supper?" 

He was almost certain that Methos' put-upon sigh was mostly feigned. His brother put his journal aside -- it looked like he'd been writing in Aramaic this time -- and looked up, his eyes glittering. 

"Are you insisting, brother?"

"The last time I _insisted_ , I ended up in a well," Kronos retorted, lifting an eyebrow. Insisting would do no good. Methos had to take this last step on his own.

Victor kept quiet, though a bit of a grin was tugging the corners of his mouth up, revealing a hint of fang as he listened to the conversation betweent the Immortals. He flicked a glance at Logan, and at the dinner he was putting together. It would be a bit before dinner was ready, which made the thought of a bit of violence before hand that much more appealing.

"It would profit you to remember that," Methos said. The even, casual tone was a warning in and of itself.

Kronos kept his mouth shut. Methos put aside his journal, rolling his eyes expressively. "Fine. Get him tied up for me, would you?" His smile was grim. "I'm sure you remember how to do it." Kronos waited until he'd turned away to let the fierce, triumphant grin cross his face.

It was a matter of minutes before their prisoner was tied up, waiting. The last qualm that Methos felt while approaching the man felt as if it belonged to someone else. The hilt of his dagger was heavy in his hand. He'd never done this sort of work with this particular blade, though he'd had it for nearly seven centuries. Then there was only blood, and noise, and _release_ , finally, after so very, very long. He came back to himself with the man limp in front of him and his arms red to the shoulder, and the smile he felt curving along his mouth was one that he'd lost almost two thousand years earlier.

Victor watched Methos work with a grin, the screams from the human soothing the snarling desire to hurt something the way a lullaby might calm a child. He sat with his back against a tree, a small plate with the food Logan had made in one hand as he watched the man die slowly under Methos's knife. Content to watch for now, knowing that he'd have the chance to indulge in his own violence later.

Sitting near his brother, Logan didn't bother to watch, wolfing down his food with an outwardly single-mindedness that hid at least some of his interest in what Methos was doing. Not in the violence itself, but in the expression he could see on the Immortal's face in his peripheral vision, and in the smile that came after. A familiar sort of smile that he'd see in the surface of water before washing up after a battle, or across the campfire when Victor'd had a particularly good day.

"Feeling better?" It said something about Methos' level of distraction that Kronos had been able to get so close behind him. He spun, the dagger coming up automatically. Kronos caught it on the downstroke, the point halting only a few inches from his chest. For the space of three shuddering breaths, Methos' expression was as blank and remote as it had ever been in the first years of their acquaintance; then recognition slid slowly back into his eyes and his arm relaxed, the dagger falling unnoticed to the ground. Kronos grabbed him hard by the back of the neck, bringing their foreheads together in a gesture of brotherhood that had been lost with his own tribe almost three thousand years ago, and Methos permitted the embrace without demur.

"Welcome home, brother," Kronos told him, and no power on earth could have kept the fierce joy out of his voice. "Welcome home."

Logan turned his head to look when Methos moved suddenly, leaving his dinner a moment to watch, and grinning when he heard Kronos speak. This was what Kronos had been hoping for when he'd told Victor to bring the human back alive, if the emotion in his voice was anything to judge by. He glanced over at Victor, who had a grin on his face to match Logan's.

"Either of you ready for dinner?" Logan leaned back a bit, relaxed as he watched the two Immortals. He didn't expect Methos would be ready until he cleaned up a bit, but he wasn't worried about it. The question was more a way to remind them that they weren't the only two here.

"Not just yet," Kronos answered, not taking his eyes from Methos' -- who, to judge by his expression, had been almost startled to remember that Creed and Logan were still present. He relaxed his grip on the back of his brother's neck, but didn't let go. "I think we'll get washed up first."

The sudden fire in Methos' eyes was answer enough. Kronos didn't so much as glance at Creed or Logan as he let go of Methos and headed into the trees towards the river they'd been following for most of the day. He'd only gone a few steps before he heard Methos move to follow.

Victor watched the Immortals vanish toward the river, keeping still until they'd left before he grinned broadly, looking over at Logan. "What are you thinking, Jimmy?" He knew something was brewing in the back of his brother's mind, had been during the journey, but Logan hadn't shared whatever it was yet. No time alone, without one or the other Immortal near enough to overhear conversation.

Logan shrugged, his gaze still on where Methos and Kronos had vanished, a thoughtful, almost calculating expression on his face. "That we found a better gig than another stint in the army," he said simply, quietly. "If we stick with them, and they don't decide to get rid of us."

The smirk that curled up one corner of his mouth after that made Victor suspect that Logan more had an unspoken 'try' in that last, and had something in mind that would make that a bad idea. Or perhaps not, and he was over-estimating his brother again, but it didn't really matter.

"Wash up?" Methos asked, as soon as they were alone. It was the first thing he'd said since he'd started on the sniper, and the calm, even tones of his voice were a relief. Kronos would have been more than happy to deal with the sort of chaos Methos had spread in his wake during their first few centuries together, but the controlled man who had become Death of the Horsemen was better at long term strategy -- and that was exactly what Kronos needed. "As if any of us ever minded being covered in blood."

"Whatever works," he answered, and shoved Methos up against a handy tree. "Besides, I like you covered in blood."

"Oh, I'm well aware of that," Methos breathed, and brought their mouths together.

Victor flicked a glance at the trees when his brother still didn't look away. "You going to tell me the rest of what's on your mind, or make me guess?" He picked over the remaining food on his plate as he waited for Logan to answer, listening for the sound of someone moving through the jungle.

"Don't know enough to share yet." Logan took another bite of his food, finally looking somewhere other than where the Immortals had gone off. "Thought we might ask if those two had any plans for something more concrete than just traveling, now that we're out of Vietnam."

It wasn't as if they had any plans, really. Just to keep moving on, and hopefully to the next war, the next battle to be fought. Though Victor wondered how much longer Logan would be satisfied with that sort of simple life, the way he was. His brother had always asked more, had been more curious about what drove the wars they fought.

Their final reunion had been just as Kronos had been hoping it would, though afterwards Methos wasn't the only one who needed to wash the blood off of himself. They bathed without speaking, because for the moment words were unnecessary, and returned to the camp in the same silence. Methos looked even younger than usual with his hair wet and clinging to his face, and not for the first time, Kronos wondered just how old his brother had been at first death. Younger than he had been, certainly, and neither of their mortal eras had been known for the longevity of those who had lived in those years.

"Is there anything left to eat, or did the pair of you finish it off?" he asked as they stepped back into the clearing in which they'd made camp. He could feel Methos at his shoulder, and couldn't quite keep the contented smile off of his face.

Victor chuckled, waving a hand at the fire and the pot still sitting next to it. "If you call that slop in a can edible, there's enough." He hadn't had the chance to really look for anything that day, watching over the human whose remains Logan had moved further from camp after he'd finished eating. Something about not wanting to deal with any sort of predator in the middle of the night.

"Better than some of the things I've eaten over the years," Kronos said dryly. "Ever lived through a famine?" He scooped up two bowls, one for himself and one for Methos, and they seated themselves near the fire. 

"Not to mention the fact that we both spent a thousand years eating Caspian's cooking one day in four," Methos interjected.

"Oh, that wasn't so bad."

"If you could _identify_ it."

Victor raised an eyebrow, amused and remembering what Methos had said about Caspian's dubious stews the first day they'd been traveling. "What he do, cook someone you knew?" he asked, a sly grin of amusement curling the corners of his mouth.

Logan came back in time to hear the question, and gave Victor a questioning look, wondering what that was about, though he didn't actually ask, settling back near the fire without giving Methos and Kronos more than a brief glance.

"More like whoever was unfortunate enough to encounter him on the days when it was his turn to cook," Methos said. "Still, even Caspian's cooking beats bark."

"Cockroaches," Kronos countered.

"Grass."

"Locusts."

"Mm, you and John the Baptist." Methos rolled his eyes. "I ate part of my own leg once." _Can you top that?_ went unspoken, but was clearly audible nevertheless.

Victor's gaze flicked back and forth between them, his smirk becoming a grin as he listened. The worst he could say he'd eaten was probably whatever he'd been able to find during the time after running from home until he and Logan had been able to find someplace to work.

Logan shook his head, though he gave Methos a startled look. "Never been hungry enough to want to gnaw on myself." Half-frozen carrion, perhaps, but not himself.

"Neither have I." Kronos lifted an eyebrow. "This happened after you dropped me in that well, I assume?"

Methos shrugged. It had actually happened some fifteen hundred years before he'd ever met Kronos. "There was a cave-in. I was trapped for months, and decided it was better to auto-cannibalize than to starve to death over and over again." He shrugged. "There hasn't been any real famine in the West lately -- not during your lifetime, anyway. Live long enough, though, and you'll probably see it." He accepted the bowl Kronos handed him, but ignored it for the moment. "Whole cities, and the countryside around them, all of them dying, too weak to move even to get water." He shrugged. "It's unpleasant, and an Immortal constitution is no protection."

A frown crossed Logan's face at the description of a famine, and he was silent for a long moment before he said, "Don't know what that would do to me or Victor." He hadn't run into anything they didn't heal from yet, but there was always a chance something out there could kill them.

"Hopefully, we won't have to find out," Methos said, spooning up the last of the dinner-in-a-can.

"Oh, I don't know," Kronos said. "It might be fun to conduct some experiments." The sardonic smile on his face said that he was probably joking, but Methos didn't think that either Creed or Logan would appreciate the humor behind it.

"Only if I get to use you as the control," he retorted.

Victor sat up straighter, his earlier grin fading to something less amused and more a feral baring of teeth. Not yet a threat, just more attentive to the conversation. Trusting, at the moment, that they could figure out how to get away from the two Immortals if Kronos carried through on the idea. No way was he letting himself or Logan end up on anyone's lab table.

Kronos made a rude gesture that was somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand years old. The amusement in Methos' eyes said that he recognized it.

"Spend much time with the Vikings?" Methos asked. Kronos grinned.

"I liked their attitude."

"You would." Methos glanced over at Victor. "Calm down. Caspian was always the one for that sort of experiment. Kronos isn't interested in science that can't be persuaded to explode."

Chuckling, Victor shrugged, relaxing just as quickly as he'd sat up. "Explosives aren't as much fun as getting in close for the kill." Blood on his hands, the screams of pain and fear.

"But useful when you need to even up the odds in a fight," Logan pointed out, happier himself with the change of subject. Even if he wasn't as concerned about the idea of Kronos trying to starve them. It would be difficult in this jungle to do so, anyway.

"Actually, I'm more interested in biologicals, these days," Kronos said. The look in his eyes wasn't exactly comforting. "I prefer toys that don't affect me." He lifted an eyebrow at Methos. "Where were you in the 1340's?"

"England," Methos said, wincing. "A nuclear explosion might have been kinder."

"But it would have taken you, too," Kronos pointed out.

Logan frowned a moment, looking over at Victor as he tried to place what Methos and Kronos were talking about. He'd been interested in history before he and Victor had fled his childhood home, but he hadn't read anything about that time period. Looking back at Methos, he asked curiously, "What happened in the 1340s?"

He wasn't sure what Kronos meant by biologicals, though from the context, he suspected something contagious. Which he doubted would effect him or Victor any more than it would the other two, and was rather more comfortable with the risk of getting loose than he had expected he would be.

"The Black Death," Methos answered. "Bubonic plague. It killed better than a third of Europe in a very short time, and almost half of England."

"Interesting times," Kronos said, grinning.

"Nightmares are interesting," Methos told him. "I wouldn't necessarily want to go through one."

Watching half - or possibly more, he doubted the distribution of death was all that even - of the people around him die would be a nightmare, in Logan's estimation. Particularly if he knew any of them well enough to care. It made him glad he'd never seen anything like that.

Victor snorted softly, shifting slightly into a more comfortable position against the tree he was using as a back rest. Death on that scale would be interesting, but not any more fun than explosives, in his opinion.

"Besides," Methos pointed out, "using that sort of thing as a weapon in this age would almost certainly lead to finding one's self at the center of a nuclear explosion. Even we might have a problem surviving that."

"Like you couldn't figure out a way to keep anyone from realizing we'd done it," Kronos snorted.

"I like modern conveniences, brother mine. Having lived through several thousand years without them, I'm in no particular hurry to return to that state of affairs."

"It only leads back to you if you take the credit for it. Release it where someone else will want to take credit for an attack." Logan knew he was only encouraging the idea, but for the moment, it was an abstract puzzle, something a little more than mere survival. And if it caused further warfare, there was something to keep Victor happy.

"There are certainly enough hot-heads in the world who would be only too glad to take the blame," Methos mused. "Not the Red Brigades -- the Soviets keep too close an eye on them for that -- but some of the Arab factions, maybe. Or one of those absurd eco-terrorist groups." The idea had appeal. Not the deaths that would result; not those, but the puzzle itself, figuring out how to accomplish the task. He caught the gleam in Kronos' eye and changed the subject quickly, before he could give the man any ideas. "Remember that war we started -- oh, about five hundred years in?" He no longer remembered the names of the different factions, but he remembered the resultant chaos, and the advantage that the Horsemen had taken of it.

Kronos grinned. "I remember that Caspian kept getting killed. And that horse you took, what was his name again?"

Methos shrugged. He'd forgotten, probably centuries ago. It had been at least that long since he'd even thought of the incident. He'd buried his time with the Horsemen deep in his memory, and only rarely allowed himself to look at it, letting the details blur together.

Logan didn't comment on the change of subject, listening instead, curious enough about the shared history of the two Immortals to let the puzzle go for now. He could always come back to it later.


	5. Chapter 5

"The Burmese border's only about half a day from here," Methos said, covering over the remnants of the previous night's fire. "I'm assuming you've got the necessary papers." Kronos nodded once, and Methos turned his attention to Logan and Victor. "You two, on the other hand, I'm sure do not." He smirks. "Fortunately, Asia tends to be a bit more lax than Western countries when it comes to the ethics of giving and accepting bribes." Kicking the last bit of dirt onto the fire-pit, he lifted an eyebrow at Kronos. "How much money are you carrying?"

"Enough," Kronos said, shrugging. "Burmese border guards don't make millions."

"You two? Anything at all?"

"Didn't have anything but a few bits of change before we were shot, and there hasn't exactly been the chance to pick up some spare cash while we've been traveling." Logan answered before Victor could provide something ruder. The snort he got from his brother was commentary enough, and he was fairly certain that Victor's idea of a bribe at the moment was to give someone a chance to run, instead of killing them outright. "Not enough to even make it worth while to attempt to bribe them out of our pockets."

"Then it's a good thing I always carry a reserve, isn't it?" Methos asked cooly. Not in cash -- currency that was accepted in one place wouldn't always be welcome in another, or could draw unwanted attention. Gold, however, had been considered valuable for most of his very long life. He re-opened his pack and dug through it until he found one of the five small bags he'd thought it prudent to bring along when he left California. He tossed it at Kronos, who caught it easily, then lifted his eyebrows at the unexpected weight.

"Gold?" he asked. Methos smirked.

"Enough for our purposes, wouldn't you say?"

Kronos opened the bag and whistled softly. "More than enough." He tossed the bag back to Methos, who pocketed it before turning to Victor and Logan.

"When we get there, the two of you stay behind me and keep your mouths shut." He glanced briefly at Kronos. "That goes for you, too. The Burmese spent a long time under British rule, and they're not terribly fond of foreigners. Especially arrogant foreigners."

"I can do humble," Kronos said. Methos rolled his eyes.

"Tell it to someone who hasn't seen you flinging insults while in chains." Kronos grinned, unapologetic. "Do you at least speak Burmese?"

"I can get by. I spent some time here when the British were in charge."

"Don't talk unless you have to. British-accented Burmese won't do you much good with the current regime." He turned back to Logan and Victor. "I can't emphasize enough the need to stay quiet. I really don't feel like ending up in a Burmese labour camp."

Victor chuckled softly, a small smirk curling the corners of his mouth, though he didn't say anything. That he didn't think the Burmese would get them _to_ a labor camp without whoever had the misfortune of escorting them being turned into so much carrion went without him having to say a word. It would appeal to his rising impatience, though he wouldn't actively do anything to endanger their crossing.

"Quiet isn't a problem." Logan shrugged, unconcerned with the orders, and moved to shoulder his pack, falling in behind Methos when they started moving through the jungle again. He kept an eye on Victor as they headed for the border, wary of what his brother might do if provoked, and hoping he'd have enough warning to keep Victor from doing something stupid.

"No?" Methos asked, pushing aside a low-hanging branch. "From what I've seen, the pair of you are about as discreet as the four of us used to be."

"We were discreet," Kronos said. "Sometimes. If we wanted something badly enough."

"No," Methos corrected him. " **I** was discreet. You and Caspian were sneaky. Silas usually had to be left with the horses."

"You said quiet." Logan let out a small snort of laughter. "You never said anything about being discreet. That's a bit harder."

It wasn't like either of them had any practice in being discreet, since it hadn't been a necessity when they were fighting, and the near-wilderness areas they'd retreated to between wars weren't places that they attracted too much attention. Beyond the uptick in reported bear maulings.

"Have either of you ever spent any time in a police state?" Methos inquired. "They can -- and will -- arrest people for such trivial offenses as 'looking suspicious'. And they strongly dislike Westerners." He hated being unable to blend in. It was one thing to revisit old times in the middle of the jungle; another thing entirely to walk into an overwhelming number of mortals as a highly visible outsider.

"And I'm supposed to not look suspicious how?" Victor gave Methos a sarcastic look, his claws reflexively lengthening a moment before he reined in the impulse to shred something. For now, at least. "Or am I supposed to play the tame pet cat?"

Methos rolled his eyes. "You keep your mouth shut and your hands in your pockets. No matter what the provocation is." He smirked. "Though I'd quite like to see you pretending to be tame. I'm not planning on heading into any heavily populated areas."

Victor laughed, eyes gleaming with amusement and a hint of barely contained violence. "Tame it is, then." At least, as tame as he ever got, which wasn't all that much. He almost hoped the border guards would do something that would give him a good excuse to take his hands out of his pockets, and set a few heads rolling.

Logan kept silent through the exchange, watching the jungle around them, the itch between his shoulders coming back with a vengeance. If something was going to go wrong, he was hoping it would do so sooner, rather than later. If only to get rid of the feeling he was in the sights of a sniper.

"This should be interesting," Kronos observed, _sotto voce_ , then switched to Hittite for greater privacy. "Victor's about as tame as I am."

"It's an unusual border guard that won't take bribes," Methos told him. "And gold opens more doors even than dollars." Switching back to English, he asked, "What papers are you carrying?"

Kronos shrugged. "Russian, Spanish, American, and British."

"Stick to the Soviet papers," Methos advised. "An American passport would be a liability."

Neither Logan nor Victor were carrying papers, and their dog tags were tucked into their packs for now, safely out of sight so long as the border guard didn't think to look through them. Though Logan doubted that would be the biggest problem if the guard decided the bribe wasn't enough, or didn't take the bribe at all. It didn't help the feeling something was going to go wrong.

It took slightly less than half a day to get near the Burmese border. Logan and Creed were both in peak physical condition, and Methos and Kronos had been that way for millennia. When they were perhaps two miles from the border itself, Methos stopped, looking around.

"We need to find a road," he said. "The last thing we want to do is come walking out of the jungle in sight of the soldiery. Being on foot will be suspicious enough."

Kronos looked around, then shrugged. "I didn't spend much time in the jungle last time I was here," he admitted.

Victor looked over at Logan, raising an eyebrow a fraction in question. He'd been smelling the faint hint of mud and dung and exhaust that clung around roads in the jungle for the last hour, and he'd almost wager there was a road a couple hundred yards to their right, roughly paralleling their way through the jungle. He hadn't mentioned it, not wanting to be exposed out in the open like that, but if Methos wanted a road...

"That way." Logan jerked his head in the direction of the road both he and Victor had picked up. "Can smell it, the damn things stink of exhaust, even here."

"Well, aren't you useful," Kronos said, smirking. "Come on, brother; time to head back into civilization. Who are we this time?"

"If pressed? KGB." He looked sidelong at Kronos. "You shouldn't have a problem pulling that off, and I don't think the Burmese will want to annoy the Soviet Union."

"And them? No one's going to buy them as secret agents of any sort, or even as Russians."

Methos shrugs. "Prisoners. American soldiers, to be transported back to the Motherland for questioning. It'll explain the uniform, at any rate." He lifted an eyebrow at Logan and Victor. "Besides, it'll give them a reason to stay quiet."

Logan wasn't certain how well the idea of him and Victor being prisoners would be accepted, but at the moment, he didn't have any better ideas to get them across the border without leaving a rather visible trail of dead bodies behind them. He shrugged, and headed toward the road, not looking back to see if the rest of them were following, though he could hear Victor falling in beside him, the brothers moving quietly and without speaking.

The road itself was little more than a muddy track, wide enough for maybe one car, if the driver were lucky, or didn't care about the condition of his vehicle. It was also empty, which was fortunate.

"All right," Methos said. "Time for all good prisoners to put their hands on their heads. Kronos -- tell me you've a Russian pistol somewhere in your armory."

"Will a Stechkin do?" Kronos asked, pulling the weapon from the small of his back. Methos rolled his eyes.

"Trust you to have one that goes to full automatic." He himself had a Tokarev, and he took it out, flicking the safety off. "I need any weapons the pair of you might be carrying," he tells Victor and Logan. "They probably won't search us, but they might search you."

Victor snickered, grinning at Methos. "Now why would I be carrying extra weapons?" Unless he'd been handed a weapon by the army he was working for, he rarely carried one, preferring to work with his hands and the claws at the ends of his fingers.

"No weapons they'll be able to find by searching me, and Victor's you can see without looking too hard." Logan shrugged, lacing his fingers together behind his head. It wasn't as if they were actually restrained this time, and it wouldn't be too difficult to attack, even from this position, if he needed to. "Play nice, Victor."

"Where's the fun in that?" Victor rolled his eyes at his brother, still smirking with amusement as he echoed Logan's stance, even if he looked far too at ease for a prisoner.

"Forget I asked," Methos said, rolling his eyes. "And at least **try** to look as if you've been mistreated and told you're heading towards a Soviet prison." He sighed. "It's Russian for the two of us from here on out. Do either of you happen to speak the language?"

"Just some insults." Victor shrugged. "Never needed anything else."

Logan echoed his brother's motion. "A little. Not enough to hold a conversation."

Methos turned to Kronos. "Russian accents, then, if we have to speak to either of them. And we start now. I'm not getting arrested because you can't be bothered to maintain a disguise."

The look he directed at Victor and Logan was flatly uncompromising. "That goes for you two as well. The only way to play a part convincingly is to be that person, even when no one else is around. Understood?"

"He should know," Kronos remarked drily. "He's spent the past two thousand years pretending to be a regular, civilized human being."

Methos bit back the retort that rose to his lips, and motioned with his pistol at the waiting road. "Move," he ordered. "You two first. Victor, hands behind your head. Let's not give our fraternal socialist comrades any reason to look too closely."

Victor gave Methos a dirty look, but he put his hands behind his head as ordered, fingers interlaced carefully to avoid slicing his scalp open. The sullen expression came easily, though the reasons behind it weren't what the border guards would be meant to assume.

Logan hadn't taken his hands down, and he moved forward without saying anything, his own expression stoic, as if he had resigned himself to being his fate, but didn't intend to actually give in to his captors. So long as it got them past the border, he was willing to pretend anything for a while.

They'd gotten on the road less than five hundred yards from the border crossing, and rounding the first bend brought the guard shack into view. As they approached, Methos glanced over at Kronos.

"Do your papers say KGB?" he asked in Russian. Kronos answered in the same language.

"Of course they do. I'm a Captain."

"Then I outrank you, Captain--"

"Timochenko. Vladmir Ivanovich."

"Vassily Petrovich Ushenko. Major."

The corner of Kronos' mouth twitched in a near-smile. "A pleasure, comrade." 

By now the guards were watching them approach, fingers already on the triggers of their AK-47's. Methos lifted his voice so as to be audible.

"Comrades! We are Soviet Security, transporting prisoners." None of the guards' faces bore any trace of comprehension, so he switched to Burmese, careful to give his words a Russian flavor, and repeated himself. There was a whispered consultation between two of the guards; then one motioned them ahead with the barrel of his rifle.

"Keep moving," Methos snarled at his faux-prisoners, this time in Russian-accented English, as one of the Burmese soldiers approached them, still aiming his rifle squarely at Methos.

"We were not informed that you were coming." He omitted the traditional honorifics that were almost omnipresent in Burmese, and Methos narrowed his eyes.

"Does your government tell you everything?" he asked, curling one lip in clear, arrogant derision. "No. Ours does not even know that we are here. We require assistance in securing our prisoners, and transport to our embassy in Rangoon."

"I cannot spare the personnel," the Burmese replied, identifying himself as the officer in charge. "Also, I must clear your entry under arms with my superiors."

"A tiresome business," Methos answered. "And these two are American soldiers, Special Forces. Very dangerous. My government will not wish to wait for your bureaucrats to cut through the red tape."

"Nevertheless," the officer responded, "you will wait. Or you will give up your arms and be searched for contraband."

Methos reached into his pocket slowly, so as not to startle the man. "My papers, comrade," he said, presenting them.

Logan and Victor just watched the interaction, neither able to follow the conversation, though the last at least was clear, even without being able to understand the words. Logan hoped this wouldn't take too long, carefully keeping his gaze ostensibly focused in the distance, boredom and resignation in equal measure in his expression, doing his best to give the impression of patiently waiting for this all to be over.

Methos watched the guard examine his papers, and when the man seemed satisfied, pulled the gold out of his pocket. "As a token of appreciation from my government for expediting this," he said, proffering it. "We need to move immediately." 

The guard opened the bag, and Methos saw with satisfaction the way his eyes lit up. It would all most likely have gone smoothly from there -- except that a command vehicle suddenly made its entrance from the Burmese side. Even before the officers had jumped out, their guard was running towards it, the sack of gold still in his hand. Methos had just enough time to reach for his pistol before something heavy crashed down on the back of his head, knocking him into blackness.

Victor didn't bother to wait for anyone to give him a command to move, the sullen expression sliding off his face like water as his hands came out from behind his head, claws extending. Ready for a fight, baring his teeth as he moved forward, not even taking the time to think about the possibility they could cause him trouble, or that he was blowing their cover.

"Victor!" Logan moved almost as quickly as his brother, though he kept his own claws hidden, not willing to show all his cards yet. Just trying to keep his brother in line, keep him back where they could fight properly, back to back, and with Kronos, at least. They weren't alone here, not like they often were.

Kronos swore viciously as Methos went down, turning his pistol on the guards and letting the full-automatic setting have its say. He'd forgotten how shoddy Soviet workmanship could be, though. After a few shots, the aim was beyond control, and there were simply too many of them, swarming out from the jungles like so many cockroaches.

They seemed to be trying to take him alive, though, so when the gun ran out of bullets he threw it aside and pulled out his sword. Here, outnumbered, was where he truly did his best work -- and Methos should be coming around soon.

Logan snarled as the soldiers came closer, picking one up and tossing him toward his comrades, knocking them over before he let his claws slide out, slicing through flesh like knives, relentless and uncompromising. His back pressed against Victor's as they fought with the vicious brutality that had earned them their date with the firing squad only a few weeks before. Blood stained his fists, splashing on his clothing from those around him who had the misfortune of coming into range of his claws or Victor's, or Kronos's sword.

It had been far, far too long since he'd gotten this sort of all-out melee, and Kronos was grinning with a savage sort of joy even as his sword carved a path through anyone stupid enough to get close to him. He barely felt the first bullet, or the second, or even the third. The fourth, unfortunately, caught him in the gut, doubling him over, and the fifth went straight through his heart. He didn't even have time to be annoyed before death took him.

Victor didn't notice Kronos going down, too involved in his own slaughter to care, not until he spotted the firing squad forming up, their guns aimed at him. He roared, the sound full of rage as he started toward them. Too late to actually make it before the bullets ripped into him, most of the wounds easily ignored, more a nuisance than painful or debilitating. But it only took one hit to the heart to drop him, blackness closing in around him before he even managed to get one of the squad.

Logan turned as Victor moved away, already knowing he wouldn't have a chance to escape, or kill the men shooting at him before they took him down as they had the other three. He only hoped he'd come back around in enough time to keep them from managing to do more than just kill them, however temporary that might be.

* * *

Methos swam back to consciousness bound and gagged in the back of a moving truck. His head was throbbing, though it had to have healed by now, and his hands were numb from the rope cutting off his circulation. Lifting his head was an effort, but he managed. Glancing to the left and right, he saw that none of his companions were bound -- and that they all appeared quite dead. Kronos, he knew, would recover in fairly short order. He wasn't sure how long it would take Victor and Logan to do the same.

The only thing worse than healing from gunshot wounds was healing from being at the receiving end of cannon or tank fire, at least as far as Logan was concerned. Though trying not to gasp for breath when he woke up from what he was sure was another close brush with death was difficult, and he wouldn't have tried if it hadn't felt like the ground was moving under him. He opened his eyes, turning his head enough to look for Victor. He was still unconscious - even gave an almost convincing impression of being dead - lying next to Logan on the bed of a truck.

When Logan moved, Methos breathed a sigh of relief. "Awake, are you?" he asked. "Get me the hell out of these ropes, before I lose a finger or two."

Logan snorted, shaking his head at the foolishness of the Burmese as he let a claw slide out, slicing the ropes binding Methos's wrists before he propped himself up against the side of the truck. Out of immediate sight of anyone looking in a mirror, but no longer sprawled on the metal truck bed. "Victor'll be out a bit longer." His brother always had taken longer to heal, though not terribly much.

"Kronos is..." Methos broke off as the familiar feel of his brother's Quickening rang in his head. Oddly, it seemed to help his headache. "...already back with us." He turned his attention to Kronos. "Five bullets, brother? Isn't that a bit excessive?"

"At least I wasn't unconscious," Kronos sniped back. The look Methos gave him in return was a warning, and he dropped the subject. "Should we grab him--" he nodded at Victor "--and make our escape?" When Methos shook his head, Kronos didn't bother to fight back his grin.

Kronos's grin made Logan raise an eyebrow in question, though he hadn't liked the suggestion of just running. Not after being shot and tossed in the back of a truck, after watching his brother go down before a firing squad again. "What did you have in mind?"

"Expressing our annoyance," Methos said, smiling unpleasantly. "I believe you mentioned a hostile takeover, brother?" Kronos lifted both eyebrows. He'd have to remember that it really, really didn't pay to irritate Methos. It never had, but this one seemed to retaliate even more severely than the Horseman had, once he was roused to anger.

"Of Burma?" he asked, just to clarify. Methos shrugged. "Why not? The country's ripe for it. I'd have left them alone if they hadn't annoyed me."

The idea appealed to Logan, and he was certain it would more than appeal to Victor once his brother woke up and was aware of the idea. He nodded, a smirk curling his lips. "Sounds like an idea."

Victor woke with a snarl, his head pounding from the lack of oxygen, and claws digging into the metal under him with a shriek rather like nails on a chalk board. He heard Logan say something, though he wasn't entirely certain what it was past the rush of blood in his ears.

"Good of you to join us," Methos told Victor cooly, wincing at the noise. His head was still aching unpleasantly, and he was in a fairly nasty mood, but Victor had to calm down. The soldiers were taking them exactly where they needed to be. "Feeling better?"

Shifting, Victor bared his fangs a moment, waiting to speak until the pounding in his head had subsided. "Once I find who shot me, and kill them." He leaned up on his elbows, watching the rest of them. "What were you talking about when I woke up?"

"A more complicated sort of revenge than mere killing," Methos answered. "I'm annoyed with the Burmese. I think it would suit them very well to be taken over by the four of us. As I told your brother, the country's ripe for it. The government is corrupt and brutal, and it won't take much to topple it. It'll take a bit more work to get the populace to fall in line, but I've got some ideas in that direction."

He still wanted to kill whoever had shot him, but Victor grinned anyway. The thought of the violence it would take to topple a government, even one easily toppled, was extremely appealing. Waiting, he wouldn't enjoy, but at least there was the promise of bloodshed later.

"I thought it would appeal," Methos drawled, stretching his feet out in front of him. "Now. What weapons have we got left? Kronos?"

Kronos shrugged. "A few knives. One pistol. You?"

"A knife. They searched me pretty thoroughly, it seems."

"They'd have to have done," Kronos said. "If you're still the walking arsenal you used to be."

"Usually. I want my sword back," Methos said grimly.

Victor snorted, letting himself flop back to the bed of the truck, lacing his hands together behind his head. "Hope the idiot in charge of the border guards didn't decide to keep it for himself, then."

It certainly wasn't in the back of the truck with them, though it was possible it was in the front with the driver. Or the other truck that Logan could hear ahead of them, the engine just enough off from the cycle of the one they were in for him to tell there was another.

"That would have been a very bad decision," Kronos said. "He's got mine, too." The purring note in his voice, was a clearer sign of danger than another man's shout. "They don't make swords like that one any longer, and even if they did, I don't feel like going to the trouble of getting used to another one anyway."

Methos nodded. He'd had the Ivanhoe for centuries. He was also concerned about what might happen if they ran into another Immortal while essentially weaponless. Neither he nor Kronos had moral objections to shooting someone and taking their head, but with only one pistol between them, it was an uncomfortably dangerous proposition.

"There's another truck in the convoy," Logan said quietly, shrugging. "Might be on there." He'd prefer it if they were there, rather than back at the border. If only because he'd rather not deal with annoyed Immortals at the moment.

"It had better be," Kronos said darkly. Methos' eyes narrowed. 

"Another truck? Just one more?" He wasn't planning on doing anything until the convoy stopped, but he still needed to know what sort of forces they were dealing with. Taking over wasn't going to be as simple as killing off the leaders and taking their places, not in this day and age. This was going to be a matter of encouraging -- and leading -- a popular revolt, and he wasn't sure if it would be better to escape, or to allow themselves to be thrown into prison, where he could at least be reasonably sure of finding enemies of the current regime.

"I only hear one more." Logan shrugged. "If there's others, their engines aren't audible over the two I can hear." There could be more, but he didn't think there were. Just the two, and he'd bet the Burmese thought they had enough men between them to control one bound prisoner and deal with three dead bodies.

Methos nodded. "We need to decide how we want to do this," he told the other three, and briefly outlined the two options he'd been torn between. "Escaping won't be difficult in and of itself, but it won't be easy to find opponents of the regime out in freedom. The Burmese aren't quite as effective at stamping out dissent as are the Soviets, but they're not far behind."

Victor scowled, still sprawled over the truck bed. He'd had enough of prisons in this part of the world when he'd had to sit in a cell after being shot. Even if he wouldn't be dead when tossed in the cell this time.

Logan didn't respond immediately, thinking it through a moment. "We can always break out of a prison later." He knew Victor wouldn't like the idea, and kept a careful eye on on his brother. He didn't much like it either, but he was more interested in what it would take to conquer a country, rather than just being a tool in someone else's plans of conquest or defense.

"Agreed," Kronos said. It would test his patience, but it would pay off better in the end than being a hunted fugitive, trying to find deeply hidden networks within the Burmese population. 

"It's settled, then." Methos frowned at the other three. "That's if they don't kill us out of hand. If I'd seriously thought that we were going to try this, I'd have told you not to get yourselves shot." Explaining away their current lack of injury would be difficult, especially as all of them looked as if they'd gone through a major war. "They must have emptied half a clip into each of you."

"They had a firing squad lined up." Victor's voice was nearly a snarl, the scowl still on his face. "I don't know how many times they shot me." At least he'd had a chance to get at them, even if he hadn't managed to actually kill any.

"It's only bullets," Kronos laughed. "No harm done." He wasn't sure how many times he'd been shot since the invention of firearms, but he'd long ago stopped getting annoyed by it. A temporary death, after all, freed one from pursuit -- usually, anyway. It didn't mean he wouldn't seek revenge, but it wasn't out of anger. The only thing that upset him in this situation was his missing sword.

"It's annoying." Victor gave Kronos an irritated look. "I didn't even get to kill any of them."

Logan snorted at Victor's expression, shifting a moment. "We can find them later, Victor." And kill them, if he wanted to, even though he expected Victor would have forgotten which soldiers were the ones that actually in the firing squad.

"Later," Kronos agreed. "First things first." He turned to Methos. "Escape -- and then what, brother? We're foreigners, and foreigners don't do well in Asian countries."

Methos shrugged. "It's not as if we're trying to colonize the place. Once the army realizes that we don't intend to purge it, and the people realize that we're going to allow them actual freedom, I doubt it will be too difficult to maintain control."

"And from there?" Logan raised an eyebrow, curious himself. The idea sounded simple enough, so long as it worked. But where to stop - or not - after taking over Burma.

"Who knows?" Methos shrugged. "There are any number of options. It'll take some serious time to consolidate power, though -- and then we'll have both the US and the USSR to deal with."

"They'll want to use us to fight their war by proxy, if they don't just decide to get rid of us." Logan was fairly certain of that, though he supposed either power could use nuclear weapons, or bomb them with more conventional weapons.

"Which means that we'll need to start improving our own military as soon as we possibly can," Methos told them. "Including getting nuclear weapons of our own. It's the only way to ensure that we'll be left to our own devices." It would be a challenge, but it certainly was possible.

Logan nodded in agreement before shifting, sliding closer to the front of the truck so he could sit up more. It sounded like a start of a plan, but right now it relied on them getting through the next indeterminate period without killing too many people while in prison.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 31 March/1 April 2010, in locked posts.


End file.
